Digital Poem, electronic literature

Electronic literature (also known as digital literature) has been introduced on the net in some recent years, but this topic haven't been widely discussed by literary academician in a lot of Indonesian universities. This digital literary works actually can be a nice topic for them to make it in a specific discourse.

Siswo Harsono, one of lecturer in English Department Faculty of Letters, Diponegoro University, has initiated to provide a specific discussion on that digital literature. Previously, he also has introduced lakonet, a traditional Javanese play on the net. This is a good starting point to promote Indonesian Literature to readers on the world web and also provide it with a literary study for the digital works.


I've tried to make a little research on this digital literary works on the net. I found many digital poems has been uploaded to this open source site. That's very interesting. How a poem is presenting to its readers on the net, with digital text, sound, and also supported by graphic or multimedia. For literary academician, this digital poem challenge them to find a new criticism, how to give an appreciation to the digital poem. Lets see these following digital poems.

Winter by William Shakespeare digital poem


Digital poem interpreting the theme for winter. done in ms. garcia's 9th grade english class. created by nathaly gonzales, alexandra vinalay, arthur macapagal, and yvette yeager

Forever Trespass, a digital poem



"Forever Trespass" is a digital poem exploring the question, "Does the poem own the poet or the poet own poem?" The sound art for this piece was constructed from the 2D (2 directional) poem, "Forever Trespass". The "normal" voice is reading the poem vertically (down the columns) and the "harmonized" voice is reading the same poem horizontally (across the rows). The video was made by animating my photographs and digital art and integrating it with the original sound art.