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.
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.
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.
Oma is a freelance artist, writer and art history researcher. They’re the creator of the blog GlitchOut, where they poke the borders between games and everything else, and aspire to head a remake of the 2000 adventure game Gift. They tweet about it all @GlitchOutMain.
Game Enjambment is a reoccurring poetry series on games and gaming.
Doki Doki Literature Club! has quickly become one of the internet’s favorite games. Disguised as a cute visual novel where the player joins his best friend’s new literature club, it drops its innocent facade after less than an hour of gameplay. I made the mistake of not knowing anything about this game before I played it.
This poem contains spoilers for the game’s “twist.”
What scared me was not
that Monika was awake.
Neither did her love
push me away. No:
It was the way their faces
snapped, shattering fast.
Sidequest’s former managing editor Naseem Jamnia used to do sciencey things, but they now slam their keyboard and call it art. By night, they play a lot of video games. And regardless of the time, they spend way too much of it on Twitter, @jamsternazzy. Also, their debut novella, THE BRUISING OF QILWA, comes out in August 2022!
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