Read my post about the winners in the Poetry Contest here.

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Time to write poetry!

Every year the Cupertino Library Foundation (website) sponsors an essay contest as part of the county’s annual Silicon Valley Reads hoopla. (Official Silicon Valley Reads website ). This year, the Library is also sponsoring a poetry contest.

There are three themes – choose one or more.

1. Write a poem about reading, writing, poetry, books and how one of these (or more) is made new by the use of technology or in the age of technology
2. Write a poem using technology as part of the process. Use hyperlinks, video, photos or music as part of the poem’s form
3. Write a poem from the point of view of a piece of technology: a phone, a computer, a game, a robot, a television, etc. What does technology think about human nature?

Here are some links to examples and sample poems to help you get inspired.

• “Ode to an Oddball Winter” — a simple way to use hyperlinks in a poem
• “Afternoon in the Shape of a Pear” remix — poem collage with links and photos
• Videopoetry by Swoon, including Twelve Moons by Erica Goss
• Code Poetry, for the truly technologically savvy.
• “Potato Soup” — a poem about love and a webcam.
• “Fallen” — a poem that could only have been “written” (generated is more like it) by a computer.
• An incredible essay about “Visual Poetry” — and a whole series of beautiful poems built with images as much as with words.

And some other interesting things in the poetry/technology vein.

• Interview with new Children’s Poet Laureate Kenn Nesbitt about whether he sees “the rise and expansion of e-books as a force for good or a threat to the future of traditional picture books” (he says “both”).
• Robin Sloan’s website. He’s the author of one of the SVR books this year, Mr. Penumbra’s 24‑Hour Bookstore, and his website is delightful and full of secrets.