Level Up Your Poetry, Part 3: The Name of the Game Is Immersion

Level Up Your Poetry, Part 3: The Name of the Game Is Immersion

by | 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…)

Level Up Your Poetry, Part 3: The Name of the Game Is Immersion

Level Up Your Poetry, Part 2: Anatomy of Two Gaming Poems

by | 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…)

Level Up Your Poetry, Part 3: The Name of the Game Is Immersion

Level Up Your Poetry: Video Games & Ekphrastic Verse

by | 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…)