Experimental Poetry 18: Interactive poetry

We explored installation poetry earlier in this series. One of the key features of a lot of installation art is that it's interactive. You don't necessarily stand there admiring the art as if you were in a gallery gazing at images. You delve in, and engage with the art using several senses. 

Installation art is not just visual. It can also be auditory, tactile, kinaesthetic, proprioceptive, and perhaps even olfactory or haptic. Interactive poetry also exploits these multiple senses to provide the reader with a participatory experience. 

In my own performance poetry I encourage my live audiences to become involved, shouting out repeated refrains, standing up or raising their hands. It brings the poetry alive and gives it deeper meaning through involvement. The audience get a work out too. We can do similarly with the written word... (even though this is a little more sedate than the ideas above).

In Gestalt psychology (the theory, not the therapy) there is something known as the law of closure. It plays on the human propensity to want to complete something that is otherwise unfinished. This can be exploited to benefit experimental poetry writing.

Method 35: Fill in the blanks. Write your poem to deliberately miss out key words. Place a blank where the word should be and ask your reader to complete the poem. The more surprising or unpredictable the word is, the better! 

Method 36: Complete the stanza. Do the same as above, but this time, an entire line is missing for the reader to complete. 

Method 37: Untitled.  Leave a blank where the title should be. Invite your reader to read the poem, and then create a title for it. Ask them to be particularly creative with this task.

Method 38; Switching words. Ask your reader to switch the position of two words in each line, or stanza of the poem. Again, the more outlandish the result, the better!

All of the above methods are great to promote collaborative writing, and are ideal for use in online poetry groups. Try some interactive poetry ideas today!

Steve Wheeler 

Previous posts in this series

Experimental Poetry 1: Found Poetry
Experimental Poetry 2: Stream of Consciousness
Experimental Poetry 3: Fake Translations
Experimental Poetry 4: Overlapping Voices
Experimental Poetry 5: Random Prompts
Experimental Poetry 6: The Movie Method
Experimental Poetry 7: Unexpected End Rhymes
Experimental Poetry 8: Calligrams
Experimental Poetry 9: Anarchic Poetry
Experimental Poetry 10: Timed Writing
Experimental Poetry 11: Paraphrasing
Experimental Poetry 12: Deliberate Malapropism
Experimental Poetry 13: Breaking Structure
Experimental Poetry 14: Speak out Loud
Experimental Poetry 15: Quantum Elements
Experimental Poetry 16: Random Interactions
Experimental Poetry 17: Installation Poetry

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Experimental Poetry 17: Installation poetry

Is poetry art? You bet your last Picasso it is! 

And, because poetry is art, there should be no limits to the ways you can express yourself. Written or spoken, your words should have no boundaries. One of the most interesting and creative art movements of the last few decades is installation art. Installation art is three dimensional and site specific. It often uses mixed and/or multi media. Examples include walk through displays, totally immersive exhibits and interactive artwork. One of the most famous, and poignant installations took place at the Tower of London in England in 2014. The display was progressive, commencing in July 2014 and concluding on November 11th the same year. Ceramic red poppies were gradually placed tumbling out of the tower and onto the grass verge, until by the conclusion 888,246 had been placed. This was to commemorate every single fatal casualty of British and Commonwealth servicemen during World War 1. 

Installation poetry therefore requires a physical space, an 'idea' and the materials or media that conveys that idea. As with any form of art, your creation depends entirely upon your ability to realise (ideate) and execute it (create). 

Method 33: Hanging verse. Use a clothes line or any other line on which you can hang strips of paper. Cut out lines of text, or phrases, or single words, and clip them with clothes pegs to the line. Invite people to create their own poems using as many lines as they wish. This is best done in a public place, like a garden, park or other outdoor space. 

Method 34: Imagens. Scatter pictures, cuttings from magazine and newspapers, images and photographs across an open space and invite people to choose as many as they like as the basis to writing a poem. This works well with children in particular, but can be used to encourage anyone to write poetry.

There are so many other ideas I could mention, but these two should get you going. You can be as elaborate as you wish with installation poetry. Bear in mind it's temporary, but then... nothing lasts for ever does it?

Steve Wheeler

Previous posts in this series

Experimental Poetry 1: Found Poetry
Experimental Poetry 2: Stream of Consciousness
Experimental Poetry 3: Fake Translations
Experimental Poetry 4: Overlapping Voices
Experimental Poetry 5: Random Prompts
Experimental Poetry 6: The Movie Method
Experimental Poetry 7: Unexpected End Rhymes
Experimental Poetry 8: Calligrams
Experimental Poetry 9: Anarchic Poetry
Experimental Poetry 10: Timed Writing
Experimental Poetry 11: Paraphrasing
Experimental Poetry 12: Deliberate Malapropism
Experimental Poetry 13: Breaking Structure
Experimental Poetry 14: Speak out Loud
Experimental Poetry 15: Quantum Elements
Experimental Poetry 16: Random Interactions

Image by Amanda Slater on Flickr used under a Creative Commons licence