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This narrative poem tells the mock-heroic adventures of an unlikely antihero on an imaginary quest. As Bigelow describes the piece,

In “How They Brought the News from Paradise to Paterson,” a first-person speaker narrates his story (in heroic verse) as he swims from one end of a resort pool complex to another in search of what he thinks is more alcohol, but is in fact a journey to find his marriage
and himself. The poem plays with the epic and tragic within a setting stifled with consumerism and class separation.

The poem is structured as the monomyth, in which the speaker, while lounging at the Paradise pool bar in a 5-star resort in Barbados, overhears what he interprets as a call to adventure: the bar has run out of rum. Taking upon himself to embark upon a journey through the pool complex to find the god-like Concierge at the far end, whose “sage advice / and quick, imperious commands” would restore the flow of rum in Paradise.

This is a true story about the untimely death of someone close to the speaker, who seeks to reconstruct the story of her death in a way that can provide closure and hopefully justice. It is also a reflection on analog and digital storytelling and the objects that hold these stories.

The work’s interface displays each portion of this linear narrative as a kind of slideshow, sequentially presenting each piece of the argument and evidence in a way that makes a compelling and moving. In tune with its media, it is very “electric” with plus and minus symbols on the sides of the slideshow (in the shape of a battery) that serve as a navigation interface. The electricity in the title, the battery, shaped interface, the line of ooooooo’s at the base of the slides— which indicates one’s position in the narrative, all seem to symbolically suggest the energy required in a assembling materials and evidence to put together a compelling narrative, one that might lead to an official investigation.

(Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)

This elegant hypertext poem consists of 28 links arranged on an excerpt from a book on bone biology. The links are barely distinguishable from the rest of the text, yet lead to poetic language that forms a distinctive contrast to the scientific text in the paragraph. The relation between the two texts isn’t simply tonal counterpoints: they are deeply interconnected, metaphorically and especially thematically.

(Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)

A story of love, and after-love. Eternity is a fickle thing, and the moments just keep coming. Clouds shift, the sun moves past, and squirrels are collecting nuts, so where does that leave us?

Into the Green Green Mud is an ode to change & impermanence, both in content and medium. Starting from a simple text “script” we are creating a number of inter-related “performances” in various media. This version includes text, images, code, and animation, with a soundtrack that you can download and listen to. Future versions might include a printed book, a live multimedia performance, sky writing, or anything else we decide to explore.