Poetry 2.0

We as poets and artists haven’t quite gotten our heads around the information age. In a world of cell phones, television, blogs, you tube, vlogs, forums, etc, people bath in a mud bath of information ( it supposed to be good for us). I see quality information and intriguing opinions sifting to the top, but where are the poets bending this technology to their will? I always thought it was the duty of authors, poets, and artists to show the world just how crazy it is, and we have to find a way to keep up.

At its base the internet is a reading dependant technology, even if you’re a you tube junkie you have to having some reading skill to find all the good videos out there, and if you don’t like to read odds are you aren’t online anyways.

<a href=http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88732661>NPR</a> had a interview the other day with literary publishers who have found that releasing digital copies of their work lead to a 300% increase in sales. Why? Well you start reading a book online and really like it, so you buy it, because we all still want to have a library, and being able to read without a computer is nice too. Secondly you tell your friends about this book you love, and then let them know they can sample it online for free. Simple word of mouth marketing.

Now poetry today seems to suffer from a lack of audience more than anything else, and I think that the internet provides a optimal place to solve that problem. See my next post for the first of many experiments.