Digital Poetry

• Digital poetry is a form of poetry that uses the computer as its primary medium, making it a visually electronic art form as much as it is a literary art form. 
• Although digital poems are most popularly found online, you can find them in a number of mediums such as on display at an Art Gallery (as digital holograms), or programed into a CD or DVD
• Many digital poets take advantage of the medium of the computer by utilizing hypertext, which adds an interactive element to the art. Viewers are recquired to click on different links so that the end result of the poem is different for each experience.

• Some digital poetry can only be accessed by the scanning of a QR Code with a smartphone, which adds an extra element of mystery to this medium
• Below shows the QR code for Genco Gulan's poem "22.2"  

• To talk about the development of digital poetry would go hand in hand with a discussion on the development of computers over time. The first account of digital Poetry can be traced back to about 1959, as cited by non-fiction book "Prehistoric Digital Poetry (1959-1995)" written by C.T. Funkhouser, in the form of hypertexts and random word generators

•  As far as the peak of digital poetry goes, I find it hard to say it ever had one for several reasons. For one, the information on the medium is hard to find. Secondly, every artist who ever used digital media that I researched used it temporarily, and never actually spent a long period of their career focusing on digital poetry. Most of them were in fact installation artists.

• If I were to speculate wildly about digital poetry (which I don't know why one would do) I would be handicapped with the idea of expanded computer use in general. Maybe one day we will be able to transport poems to one another without even speaking; just with the brainwaves in our minds.