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Poemaps: Perspectives for Creation and Circulation of Poetry in a Multimedia Context

Based on research conducted with support from Fapemig and CEFET-MG — on the production of poetry and digital art in Brazil, and Portugal, especially the artworks included in ciclope.com.br — we, the Brazilian research group Tecnopoéticas (CEFET-MG), have sought to elaborate scientific literature examining the literary and artistic production in their dialogical relations. The Poemaps research project seeks to think broadly about the creation, the editing and the sharing possibilities of literature — particularly, poetry — in the realm of digital technologies.

We are particularly interested in perspectives on the book inside the context of media convergence. Also, we consider as critical aspects the creation and distribution of poetry and art in electronic and analog media. This research considers that digital literature, or electronic literature, manifests itself through diverse forms, and it is presented through digital social networks. We will address conceptual challenges and the need to consolidate these same concepts around digital poetry. The intrinsic elements of this project are: the critical articulations between poetry and the urban space; the usage of online tools, such as maps and georeferencing services; the labyrinth as a mechanism for imagination and for questioning reality; and the interactive creations of poetry as an extension of literary criticism.

We can no longer disassociate digital and analog worlds, they pervade, intertwine and complete each other: networks, cities, maps, labyrinth, and poetry. From these conceptual lines, Poemaps allows us to contemplate not only the practical perspective of creation, publication and diffusion of poetry, but also throws a glance at the convergence between diverse worlds: that of diverse languages, that of poetic creation, technological apparatuses and the games of interdiscursive representations in social communications. From this, a diverse poetic performance within digital networks emerges.

Everything that is in the immaterial remains there. This is how we treat mental images, for example. The image of a certain place, the visual memory, the sensations memorized about a space are all in the realm of the untouchable. Like digital records and maps: just virtualizations of space. It seems to us that this journey inside virtual maps makes us think like Benjamin in his Passages, when he writes, about the “flâneur,” that

When moving through urban spaces, in these times of digital artifacts, physical nature is mixed at all times with its own virtualization. The digital map guides through the entrances and exits across urban labyrinths that feedback from the physical space by capturing places and virtualizing new elements. There is also a temporal dimension on the spatial plane. We will probably walk over decades or centuries of History in a certain place, but we also glimpse a possible future there. So the map is a form of projection of the imagination and reinvention of what was lost.

For the poetic creation, a social networking tool was also used: Facebook. The structure of publications in posts and comments allowed a collaborative writing, remixed, full of derivations and connections, which in a broad aspect opens up possibilities for creating and editing an interactive book, moving in the direction of transtextual, metatextual or architextual writing (Genette 1989: 9-17). Throughout the editing process, it was possible to perceive how transtextuality, according to the model proposed by Genette, acts in the literary text, expanding the field of creation, also through media interventions, and, on the other hand, is also an activity of literary criticism.

In addition, the research presents the transformation of urban space, as well as the transformations in art and literature, revisiting conceptual aspects approached by Walter Benjamin (1892-1940). The concept of “cyberflaneur” proposed by André Lemos (2001) is added, suggesting the relation of the modern urban self presented by Benjamin to the self of the present time in social coexistence in the environment of cyberspace.

In this app, texts are inserted into the ongoing conversation of the literary system, and they will be continuously commented and repositioned within the application. At first, Poemaps was meant to be a creative project that appropriates commenting functionalities of a popular social media platform. In a second phase, Poemaps integrated works produced on the social media platform, envisioning the existence of an open artwork piece. Finally, on a third moment, the Tecnopoéticas group explored the possibilities of convergence when linking digital and print poetry in the creation of an artist’s book.

Poemaps appeared during a series of discussions, readings and ideas about digital literature, during the course of Multi-Platform Poetry Publishing and Dissemination, taught in the stricto sensu BA Program in Language Studies, at CEFET-MG. The platform was collectively created and had participation of students of the course and guests. Throughout the discussions, we came up with the following ideas to conceive the Poemaps project: labyrinth, urban space and georeferencing. At the same time, the social network group resource Facebook was chosen as the basis of exchanges and as a repository of related poetry.

During production, participants noticed that the space of interchanges and mediation of the project brought about interesting and unique characteristics because the tool shaped a different way of appropriating the poetic. In the group space of the social network, it was possible for the publications of poetry to be made collaboratively, including interference and remixing of derived poems in the form of comments. It was also noted that these comments brought resignifications to the original text and, at some point, connections with other texts within the platform.

Thinking about the theme of the project and the features of the repository and exchanges tool, an environment was created that allowed the publication and diffusion of poetry through a georeferencing system. The main function of this environment is to allow the project to be an open, hypertextual and collaborative work.

The repository of new georeferenced poetry was published in an online environment. Poemaps was developed in the programming languages PHP, Javascript, HTML5, CSS and a MySQL database (cf. Figure 1, and the website Poemaps) [1].

For the georeferencing of location marks a plugin for Wordpress [2] was written, using the services of the GoogleMaps platform. With this plugin it is possible to integrate all the features of the Google Maps service into Poemaps.org, offering the possibility of adding a pin on the exact location to which the content is associated with. This is the first concrete form of the Poemaps project. The site uses a map resource to register poetry, preserving georeferencing and the hierarchy relating poetry and its derivations, published in the form of a commentary, with the additional possibility of insertion of images.

Secondly, a layer of presentation of poetry published in the closed group was planned. The idea is to present the poems created in the first moment of the project according to the same hierarchy: poem, comment, and comment on commentary. To do so, the creation of a labyrinthine environment with references to urban space that allows for navigation in first person is being developed. The objective is to propose an exploration of the texts, and as a secondary issue the exploration of the environment in virtual simulation.

A planned evolution of the project is the creation of an artist's book that will bring together the productions of the project in a printed version, but with reading templates that will allow the convergence with the hypertextual content of the original production [3].

The tool will remain open for further insertion of georeferenced poems, comments and images. The concept of open work is essential for the constitution of a networked community in order to disseminate poetry and foster the experimentation with language.

The term transtextuality, proposed by Genette refers to a set of texts and their relations, manifest or not. In view of this concept, it is important to take up five types of textual relations that pervade transtextuality: intertextuality, paratextuality, metatextuality, hypotextuality or hypertextuality, and architextuality (1989: 9-17). In this kind of production we are very interested in the interconnections among these multiple textualities. In a way, metatextuality — also called “commentary” by Genette — is particularly relevant because it fits very pertinently to the creations that we realize in Facebook. There, one author would comment on the poem of another, sometimes without explicitly naming it, as described by the French scholar. Here, on Figure 2 and Figure 3, we offer an example of this metatextual poetic production (cf. below for further discussion):

In “From labyrinths & streets & books,” the poet Caio Junqueira finds the reference to Rua Violinhas, in Braga, Portugal, which reminds him of a tale by Altino Tojal, a writer from that city. And the word “tojal” inspires a semiotic chain, with which it remembers itself and expands its affective relations with space and, therefore, with Portuguese literature.

In the second example, in Rogério Barbosa’s response “To reinvent Caio Junqueira,” there is also a game with the surname of the poet, highlighting the relationships between “junqueira” and “junco” to reestablish the poet’s affective relations with the city of Sabará, Minas Gerais, and the city of Braga. The poem suggests that the plot of memory and the playful and symbolic matter of the poem reinvent the existential relations and the very space through which one walks. On the other hand, the poet Caio Saldanha interacts creating a burlesque poem, with sonorous language games, to accentuate the strange but curious relations that the language offers us within the same language spoken on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Such examples provide a demonstration of how the map can unfold layers intersected by different perspectives of the eye. That is, they are cultural layers whose design brings out new realities at a point on the map.

The latent expression of electronic literature in the Poemaps project gives form to five types of textual relations as conceptualized by Genette. The first type, intertextuality, is defined by Genette as “a cooperative relationship between two or more texts.” (10). It is explicit in texts where there are quotations, plagiarism, allusions or references.

The second textual relation, the paratext, refers to the set of resources or texts that integrate the totality of the textual disposition. In a book, for example, paratexts can be titles, footnotes, editor’s comments, a preface, an epilogue, and so on. In a project like Poemaps, within the creation space (Facebook group), you can cite the description of the group or the title of the group as paratextual elements. On the project presentation page, the paratexts are on the page menu, in the descriptions and in the instructions. The paratexts, although attached to the main text, can direct, complete or change the meaning of a textual work. Their absence does not interfere with the existence of the text, but alters its functioning. It means that the paratext can magnify or redefine the possibilities of the genre, transforming it.

Metatextuality is the third type of textual transcendence cited by Genette. Generally referred to as “commentary,” it is a key textual relationship in the discussions of poetic creation established in Poemaps. The comments of the main texts in the project establish a full textual dialectic between authors, give rhythm to a critical relationship and, according to Genette, “metatextuality is the critical relation par excellence” (13). In the relation between texts and commentaries, we perceive distinct hierarchical levels. We also notice that the transcendence of texts occurs in a complex, entangled way. We observe, from Poemaps itself, that there is a coexistence of levels of intertextuality and paratextuality. The texts imply the metatextual element, but create fluid fields of meaning when we perceive these relations between texts.

The fourth relation, of hypertextuality, is defined by Genette as the reference or resumption from a first text (hypotext) to a second (derivative) text. It is the relation of two distinct, independent, but derived literary works, in which the text produced later is a simple transformation or an imitation. Versions of a work, parodies, modified editions of a book, are examples of hypertext.

The fifth type of textual transcendence is the most abstract and implicit: architext According to Genette, it refers to the textual genre or genres, with explicit indication or not. Architextuality goes back to the idea of structure, of model. However, it is an abstract and implicit relationship because “the text itself is not obliged to know, let alone to declare, its generic quality” (10).

The five textual relations are not isolated categories, which act in a disconnected way. These relationships are an intrinsic component of textuality, whether they stand out from the texts or not, they are always present in one form or another. The concept of transtextuality helps us to understand the questions proposed by interactive poetry in the textual field. Above all, in Poemaps, it is possible to emphasize that the metatexts produced can unite the various forms of transtextualities, and constitute a remarkable resignification of texts. See, for instance, the following text:

In this example, the visual creation by Andre Araújo and its response poems constitutes a form of metatexuality between different genres. Here, we can see not only the theme of freedom in its political implications for the field of social action or freedom of the body but also a reference to the freedom in artistic creation. The small screen was inspired by the place of its insertion, the Praça da Liberdade in Belo Horizonte. A square designed according to the model of Versailles in Paris around the old administration center of the government of Minas Gerais. The responses to this painting are poetic forms that foreground, in the case Rogério Barbosa da Silva’s poem, a surrealist atmosphere, in which the erotic drive and the political drive come together as creative forces. It thus supports one of the tensions of visual creation. In the poem by Caio Saldanha, in turn, the poetic mischief or play, from the erotic, are means of ascesis.

Therefore, in this last category, we can observe the relations between the mode of enunciation of the platform to which the project is associated and its potentialities developed in relation to the text. And, as Genette indicates, these categories do not stand alone or hierarchically. The theory of transtextuality proposed by Genette elucidates the multiple textual relations established through the Poemaps creative system. In short, in Poemaps, we observe that the relations between the texts are not hierarchical. One text stimulates the form and content of the other, even when belonging to different genres and artistic forms.

We believe that the act of writing is also a means to promote the imaginary and, therefore, for virtualizing space. The very act of mapping virtualizes space. This is a new plan that assumes a real space, that is, the virtual map plane, the GPS plan. GPS is a dynamic instrument, because it changes the perception of place, causes us to move and assign new directions to the routes or rethink the distances while we move. Thus, we can say that the physical environment is constantly being reimagined and reinserted into our experiences.

Poemaps uses online map services to georeference poetry in some spaces, promoting the desire to describe lived or imagined spatialities. The urban space is inscribed in the memory of the poet and is represented by the virtual map presented with synaesthetic effects in the poem. Space, memory, identity and memory are elements that also permeate the urban space.

The choice of urban space as thematic for poetic productions in Poemaps was not random. Given the theoretical references that supported the creation of the project, it is possible to verify that urban experience is a fundamental issue in modern literature. In addition, it is the subject of constant exploitation in postmodern poetic productions. The relationship between urban and virtual space also proposes interesting dialogues through texts. The poem of departure, made by Renata Sampaio, the comments by Caio Saldanha and Nestor Prisca Reis are examples of how the daily life of the same urban space is perceived in a different way by each one. And this way of perceiving the living space highlights the contradictions inherent in the big cities. However, an image of the garbage collector reveals itself as a kind of rebel against the impositions of the modern city. It forces your pedestrian existence against the speed of the city (cf. Figures 5 and 6):

In the cited texts, a photograph taken from inside a bus reveals the urban space through an optical perspective that breaks with banality. Renata Sampaio’s poem captures the pause of a street vendor with his exotic merchandise cart. The poet recalls the concept of “punctum,” by Roland Barthes, to talk about the power of the little gadgets we carry in our day-to-day existence. In the poem of Nestor Prisca Reis, this magical event that a pedestrian can reap in the urban scene, as Baudelaire showed us, is accentuated.

The city, with its stories and memories revealed, is also a means of exploration. In the crystallization of modernity, the urban space presents itself with a web of intertwined paths, of transit of individuals that often cross streets and corridors without finding the exits. As Benjamin analyzes, when he addresses cities in modernity, “flâneur”, inspired by the modernization of Paris in the mid-nineteenth century. For the author, modernity made Paris a mock city, in perpetual motion.

Walter Benjamin deals with the period of the formation of the modern metropolis in the midst of political and ideological revolutions that occurred in the mid-1830s to 1870s. New forms of socialization were created and encouraged by means of a new urban model, geared to the needs of circulation, speed, and expanding trade.

From Benjamin’s ideas on modernity and urban society, André Lemos (2001) brings the idea of digital flâneur, which discusses the coexistence of urban space and virtual space. Taking as a reference the nature of urban quotidian life, as well as Baudelaire’s flâneur revisited by Benjamin, Lemos reshapes the mask of the flâneur as that of the contemporary self who

From wandering around cities, as Baudelaire describes, to traverse various hyperlinks on internet sites, the individual in the urban space evokes his/her walking by leaving traces. The flâneur of cyberspace is conditioned to existential conflicts along the lines of the city:

His freedom in the labyrinth of paths and hypertexts gives him the idea of power and the illusion of being exempt from the social, historical and conditioning impositions of modern industry.

Urban space in the context of the digital age brings new questions. In poems created for Poemaps, there is an attempt to rescue memories of a real-world environment and move them to cyberspace. The urban experience occupies the “non-space” of the network and ceases to be an individual and momentary experience to become shared, commented, “remixed.” As an example, see poetry extracted from the Poemaps project on Figure 7.

Figure 7. Panoramic view of Belo Horizonte Bus Station and Neighborhood Bonfim - Leonardo Morais and Rogério Barbosa.

In the poem of figure 7, Leonardo Morais exalts a region of the city of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil. In the derivations, in dialogue with other poems of the network, the same region presented in the main poem is expanded, presents new character, new conflicts, new characteristics. The three poets portray aspects of this urban space, offering three perspectives of passers-by and observers of this environment.

It is also possible to make an analogy relating the use of virtual maps and GPS to the experience of the labyrinth, through, for example, the circumstances of wandering in the urban space with the use of a localization tool, causing the user to get lost among streets without exits or places not updated. The labyrinth analogy is also reflected in the individual’s paths through the network, through various paths, hyperlinks, shortcuts that may have no way out or get lost in cyberspace.

Besides the proposal of cyber-flaneurie, Lemos also proposes the labyrinthine relationship of wandering through cyberspace. To navigate the cyberspace is to walk in a labyrinth where writer and reader are confused, adventurers and conformists coexist side by side. Cyberspace is also an environment open to reconstructions, placing the cyber-flâneur, as the screener (Rosello) of hypertexts.

It is important to note that in walking through cyberspace it is acceptable to be lost, not to return by the same path, or not to follow the same path forever. In addition, the digital flâneur, consciously or unconsciously, even though he does not intend to return to the paths he has traveled, leaves traces. Whether in the form of evaluation (tastings, shares), or in the form of creation (comments, writing, collaboration).

Another important aspect to emphasize in this project is the meaning of a performative and open artwork, something allowed by the use of the digital tool in the production of texts, images or videos inserted in Poemaps. It is a dialogue among poets that does not end. In this sense, the system created functions as a continuously changing narrative game. It allows the reader to enjoy different modes of interpretation. The project is inscribed as work-in-progress and, in a certain way, correlated to the concept of “open work,” developed by Umberto Eco.

Evidently it can be said that every work is somewhat open because it inspires multiple readings and even new creations. However, this concept is very pertinent, because it concerns the process of making art, and does not concern the finished work, as we can see in the statement of the Italian writer, referring to Henri Pousseur’s work:

The act of “encouragement” in Poemaps lies in the fact that it is a platform for the creation and sharing of texts (there are verbal, visual, sound or animated poems in videos, but also paintings, musical or sound creations). The constraining rule is that the works must be georeferenced on the map. At the discretion of the participants, a visual work can inspire a text and vice versa. In this sense, we can affirm that Poemaps, besides being a continuous work, posed as an invitation to new creations, is also an open work. This is because one work invites another, changes and expands along a global map. Slowly new authors and landscapes were integrated (now already at the site www.poemaps.org), such as the young writer of Passo Fundo, RS, who plays with an unusual encounter between the thought and the body of the beloved. The city here is a pretext of distance and also of approximation (see Figure 8):

In this creative platform, the goal is not to compose anthologies of contemporary poets of one or more countries. Poemaps is established as a free platform, which brings into dialogue poets recognized in the literary field and also unknown, unpublished and novice poets as creators. It is a stimulus for creation, it makes one corner pull another, as did the old troubadours. Finally, it allows the arts to visit and enter into dialogue.

The concept of open work is also relevant if one considers the possibilities of new creations based on the texts produced initially within the selected themes (urban space, labyrinth and geolocation). Within the project, for example, there is the initiative of producing an artist’s book, with poems generated in the Poemaps network proposed by collaborators of the network of poets.

Poemaps developed not only as a work of knowledge about the possibilities for digital literature, but it also functioned as a laboratory for analysis and research on writing and publishing in a collaborative and hypertextual project.
Based on the bibliographical research for the project, one can observe the intrinsic relation of the transformation that involve individuals and urban space, individuals and cyberspace, individuals and literature. It is also possible to say that the concept and experience of the labyrinth is present in these three spheres.

In another aspect, Poemaps presents tacit and potential imbrications of text in its multiple textual categories and in its relationship with reading. The project rescues the concept of transtextuality as defined by Genette and elucidates the categories of intertextuality, paratextuality, metatextuality, hypertextuality and architextuality. These transtextual relations of make one reflect on the possibilities of the publishing process, whether in digital literature or in printed book productions.

It can be concluded that digital social networks are fertile spaces for textual experimentation. From the point of view of poetic creation, it allows us to overcome cognitive borders of the printed and analog media.

The structure of the project — which presents a community of poets who create, recreate, comment, and provide new continuities to the texts inserted into the platform — allows us to see Poemaps in addition to the published content.
The idea of presenting access to poetry on a map makes us question the dual function of the city: to let ourselves be lost, like Baudalaire’s flâneur, and trying to get us to find a GPS tool or any locative device.

While the poets create paths surrounded by text, forming a labyrinth of poetry where the reader can get lost in stretches with no exit, the map indicates the location of the poetic narrative. If you get lost, you find yourself, in urban space or in the labyrinth. There are many metaphors present in this network.

It is necessary to emphasize that the development of the concept of Poemaps in the course constituted an important tool for critical reflection and creative opening for the students involved. For many, it was the first time they had created an artistic text while conceiving its dissemination in the context of a project. The alliance between creating and doing criticism was visible to all. In addition, the unfolded steps of the project were revealing that the form of publishing interferes with the critical apprehension of the published object; and likewise, the variants of the work constitute not only plural forms of their existence, but also distinct critical instances awakened by a given object.

BENJAMIN, Walter (2012). The Arcades Project I. Translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
ECO, Umberto (1999). The Open Work. Translated by Anna Cangogni. Cambridge, Massachussets: Harvard University Press.
GENETTE, Gérard (1989). Palimpsestos: La literatura en segundo grado. Madrid: Altea, Taurus, Alfaguara.
HAYLES, N. Katherine (2002). Writing Machines. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
LEMOS, André (2001). “Ciber-flânerie.” Comunicação na Cibercultura. Ed. Sueli Fragoso, and Dinorá Fraga Silva. São Leopoldo: Editora Unisinos.

[1] www.poemaps.org.

[2] WordPress is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) based on PHP and MySQL. WordPress is installed on a web server that is either part of an Internet hosting service or a network host in its own right. See: https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPress.

[3] At the moment, a partner team of the group LabFront (UEMG - State University of Minas Gerais), with the support of Prof. Pablo Gobira, is developing a proposal for 3D editing of creations made in Poemaps. See: http://labfront.tk/.