by Katherine Quevedo | Aug 24, 2023 | Features, Poetry, Video Games
Video games occupy a liminal space, a threshold between digital and physical worlds. Our choices and actions in one directly influence the other. Video games conform to their own sets of rules, which may or may not mimic the laws of physics, morality, etc. In this sense, they share quite a bit in common with prose poems. (more…)
Katherine Quevedo was born and raised just outside of Portland, Oregon, where she lives with her husband and two sons. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Rhysling Award, and her debut mini-chapbook, The Inca Weaver’s Tales, is forthcoming from Sword & Kettle Press. Her speculative fiction appears in various anthologies and magazines. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys playing old-school video games, watching movies, singing, belly dancing, and making spreadsheets. Find her at www.katherinequevedo.com.
by Katherine Quevedo | Aug 7, 2023 | Poetry
Game Enjambment is a reoccurring poetry series on games and gaming. (more…)
Katherine Quevedo was born and raised just outside of Portland, Oregon, where she lives with her husband and two sons. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Rhysling Award, and her debut mini-chapbook, The Inca Weaver’s Tales, is forthcoming from Sword & Kettle Press. Her speculative fiction appears in various anthologies and magazines. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys playing old-school video games, watching movies, singing, belly dancing, and making spreadsheets. Find her at www.katherinequevedo.com.
by Katherine Quevedo | Oct 10, 2022 | Poetry
One summer, in what's now called the Oregon Zoo—
back in the mid-nineties, way back, when a chain
of metal clamped my teeth, before I knew
what to do with my wild and dark mane,
long before I grew comfortable lining my eyelids—
I donned my ZooTeen volunteer t-shirt and worked
at the Carmen Sandiego scavenger hunt stations, where kids
solved puzzles and earned stamps. Her henchmen lurked
at various sites, actors glimpsed near the hippos
or giraffes, and once in a while, Carmen herself above
the old elephant exhibit in lipstick-red clothes
and raven hair, an elusive embodiment of
Latina moxie and wiles. I volunteered
at the entry station, instructing young gumshoes
in the rules of the game. At break time, I disappeared
for lunch on a bench near the goats, watching the zoo's
detectives disperse. Two girls approached my bench
and asked, in nervy unison, "Are you Carmen
Sandiego?"
"No."
Then, I pictured myself in a trench
and fedora. Vermilion. What would be the harm in
saying "yes"? But the sleuths had already returned
to their bold quest for the dashing mastermind thief.
Imagine that red coat belted, collar upturned.
But I get to hide in plain sight. What a relief.
Katherine Quevedo was born and raised just outside of Portland, Oregon, where she lives with her husband and two sons. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Rhysling Award, and her debut mini-chapbook, The Inca Weaver’s Tales, is forthcoming from Sword & Kettle Press. Her speculative fiction appears in various anthologies and magazines. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys playing old-school video games, watching movies, singing, belly dancing, and making spreadsheets. Find her at www.katherinequevedo.com.
by Katherine Quevedo | Jun 6, 2022 | Features, Poetry
In my two prior essays about the craft of video game poetry, I’ve touched on the roots of poems inspired by art and other media (i.e., ekphrastic verse) and broken down some examples of my own work to show how digital games can inspire wildly different homages. Now, I’d like to dig into one of the best practices of poetry in general, something that should be a natural fit for gaming poems in particular: creating an immersive experience for the audience. (more…)
Katherine Quevedo was born and raised just outside of Portland, Oregon, where she lives with her husband and two sons. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Rhysling Award, and her debut mini-chapbook, The Inca Weaver’s Tales, is forthcoming from Sword & Kettle Press. Her speculative fiction appears in various anthologies and magazines. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys playing old-school video games, watching movies, singing, belly dancing, and making spreadsheets. Find her at www.katherinequevedo.com.
by Katherine Quevedo | Oct 18, 2021 | Features, Poetry
In the first part of this two-part essay, I laid out my approach to writing poetry inspired by video games. If those three criteria felt too prescriptive for your tastes, then by all means, please use them as inspiration to rebel! Personally, I find the criteria open-ended enough to allow a multitude of outcomes. In this second part, I’ll use two of my gaming poems, one free verse and one formal structure, to illustrate the approach in action and how it helped me produce two vastly different results. (more…)
Katherine Quevedo was born and raised just outside of Portland, Oregon, where she lives with her husband and two sons. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Rhysling Award, and her debut mini-chapbook, The Inca Weaver’s Tales, is forthcoming from Sword & Kettle Press. Her speculative fiction appears in various anthologies and magazines. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys playing old-school video games, watching movies, singing, belly dancing, and making spreadsheets. Find her at www.katherinequevedo.com.
by Katherine Quevedo | Oct 4, 2021 | Features, Poetry
Poetry about video games? You bet. It follows a fine tradition of ekphrastic poetry, or verse inspired by visual arts. Just as a poet might depict a painting in detail, you can portray the sights, sounds, and experiences of digital games through verse. The realm of video games contains its own cultures and subcultures, its own mythologies. It can be an exciting source of inspiration, one that doesn’t feel as saturated as other sources given its relative newness in the grand scheme of all media. (more…)
Katherine Quevedo was born and raised just outside of Portland, Oregon, where she lives with her husband and two sons. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Rhysling Award, and her debut mini-chapbook, The Inca Weaver’s Tales, is forthcoming from Sword & Kettle Press. Her speculative fiction appears in various anthologies and magazines. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys playing old-school video games, watching movies, singing, belly dancing, and making spreadsheets. Find her at www.katherinequevedo.com.
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