Writers in New Media to Gather from Around the World for First International Digital Poetry Festival at UB

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- "E-POETRY, 2001: An International Digital Poetry Festival," the first convocation of digital poets and artists gathered to focus on the emerging medium, will be held April 19-21 at the University at Buffalo.

The festival will bring together scores of practitioners from North America, Europe and Latin America who never before have appeared together in the same program, and will focus on works in networked and programmable media; kinetic/visual work; hypertext, and multiple practices in digital media.

Organized by poet Loss Pequeño Glazer, director of the Electronic Poetry Center (EPC) at UB, the festival is sponsored by EPC, the UB Department of English, UB's College of Arts and Sciences, the UB Poetics Program and just buffalo literary center.

It will follow the tradition of great New Poetry festivals of the past, providing a context for readings, conversations and social interactions, and a locus for the coming together in a non-hierarchical manner of the different views, practices and theories that define this emerging field. See attached program for details.

The emphasis will be on presenting internationally influential practitioners whose contributions have yet to be publicly recognized in the United States. This will be the first presentation of works of this range and depth in a single venue.

Featured poets will include such luminaries as Kenneth Goldsmith, Brazil's Giselle Beiguelman, Canada's John Caley, Australia's Komninos Zervos and Janez Strehovec of Slovenia, as well as Americans Jennifer Ley, Charles Bernstein and Jim Rosenberg.

They, along with other participants, will read, perform and exhibit works that currently define the state of the art in digital poetries.

The festival will feature three full days of morning and afternoon panels, highlighted by featured readings in the afternoons and evenings. Panels and roundtable discussions will provide the opportunity for digital practitioners, scholars and electronic editors/publishers to engage in conversations on crucial, controversial and/or critical questions about these evolving forms.

The festival will be preceded by a digital reading and reception beginning the afternoon of April 18. An optional trip to Niagara Falls will be offered on April 22.

"Though digital poetry has been part of other digital conferences," Glazier says, "'E-POETRY, 2001' promises to be an historic literary event since it will be the first festival devoted exclusively to this emerging form of literary practice so crucial to the 21st century. We hope it will prove a landmark literary event, as well as a coming-of-age event for the current practice of digital poetry.

Open registrations for E-Poetry 2001 no longer are being accepted, but interested parties may register on a space-available basis by sending a message indicating interest to epc@acsu.buffalo.edu with "REGISTRATION FOR E-POETRY 2001" in the subject line. Include name, e-mail address and URL for your work (if applicable), institutional affiliation (if any), main area of interest in the medium, and city/state or city/country.