by Juliet Wilson
I read a discussion somewhere recently about how most online poetry doesn’t take advantage of the unique opportunities offered by being online, particularly hyperlinks. (Sorry, I don’t know where this discussion is, otherwise I’d link to it!) Being aware that most of my blog readers aren’t in the UK, I regularly use hyperlinks in my poems to direct readers to pages showing the birds I so often write about, as in this haiku:
leaves unfurl -
the chaffinch’s chest brighter
than yesterday
But there must be so much more potential than this! So I’m suggesting that in this week’s challenge you think about how you can use hyperlinks to add depth to your poetry. Perhaps to save explaining a reference, you can just add a link, or perhaps you can link to a series of photos that complement your words. This offers good opportunities to collaborate, too.
Whatever you write, remember to come back next week to Get Your Poem On and share your work.
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Hello fellow poets,
I participated in Napowrimo and was hoping we could share a bit about our experiences of the month. I posted a bit about my experience here if you’d like to join in.
-Mallery
P.S. Great prompt, I am going to have fun with this one!
Hmm, I’m not sure, my experience of reading poems is always lessened if they include hyperlinks. I wonder if it takes the depth out of the poem, makes it go sideways and outwards instead – ? I appreciate though that it is another shapeshifting poetry undergoes at the leading edge, and I’m usually not up with the latest trends.
Great prompt Juliet, I look forward to having a play around with it. I see Sarah’s point as part of the challenge of the ‘hyperlink poetry’ form
I do appreciate hyperlinks and see them quite often but it seems like a lot of work. Or maybe I just don’t know how to do them right. What is the process? Sorry, I’m still a novice computer user! I figured out how to leave a link to my poems but it took a while to learn that < href, etc. stuff. Is there an easier way?
Sarah – I agree with you, like Claire, I find that part of the challenge. Sometimes it seems to me as though its a distraction to include hyperlinks in poetry, sometimes it seems like an underused resource for adding depth and texture….
Linda – Blogger lets you add hyperlinks quite easily, you just highlight the word or phrase you want to add a link to, then in the toolbar there’s a nice little hyperlink tool which you select, which will bring up a little box in which you paste the address of the site you want to link to. (Feel free to contact me if that doesn’t make sense!)
Actually, since I am using Safari on a Mac, which is not fully supported by Blogger, the hyperlink tool is not available. At least, it wasn’t last time I checked, maybe they have fixed it but in the meantime I got used to having to type in all the html myself, it is quite quick once you get past the initial learning phase.
I just checked and found I have the hyperlink tool after all
Thanks, Juliet, I’m going to try that! i figured there was an easier way!
Yes I know this is the wrong place to link to my poem, but I’ll be out of town next week so here it is:
http://foundcraftygreenart.blogspot.com/2009/04/scots-in-malawi.html
I look forward to reading everyone’s contributions
If your software doesn’t let you make links easily, this website does. Easy Hyperlinks
Hello,
This is the first time I’ve used one of your word prompts to have a go with – and I don’t claim to be a poet!
Not sure what the form should be but just letting you know. Thanks!
wow…i made one poem during NaPoWriMo, linking it to some lovely pictures…i hope it’ll be fine if i’ll post it this thursday…but i’ll make new one as well.
thanks for the prompt…
This is a conversation I had in college; I referenced something very obscure, and some folks in the workshop felt that not knowing the definition lessened the poem, but my argument was that if you did a google search, the correct context was the first search results; if you wanted to know what it meant, it would be very easy to find. Plus, it was what I wanted to use; I didn’t feel like I should change it when it was so easy to figure out what it is. Alas, traditionists felt like it was lazy to do such a thing.
I invented a word (or term) that’s in Urban Dictionary: mood link (like mood ring), whose color “takes on” a feature or characteristic of its link target. I’ve used this in some of my poems. (The UD editors allowed it in after about two months!)
[...] This was written for two Read Write Poem Prompts this week – Read Write Word # 16 and Read Write Prompt # 74: Hyperlink Your Poetry. I used some of the words in the first prompt and added hyperlinks to some pictures, Wikipedia [...]
[...] week’s Read Write Poem prompt (#74: Hyperlink Your Poetry) was to hyperlink a poem and try to add a bit of depth. I wanted to try to hyperlink every word so [...]