{"title":"The poem as meme? Pop video poetry in the digital age (Warsan Shire/Beyoncé)","authors":"Elisa Ronzheimer","doi":"10.1080/02666286.2020.1866970","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The adaptation of texts by contemporary British-Somali poet Warsan Shire for Beyoncé’s visual album Lemonade, released in 2016, raises several questions about poetic representation in the twenty-first-century mediascape. Shire’s poems, which have been composed for a variety of media, ranging from print distribution to audio recordings to online circulation, serve as transitions between the musical tracks in Lemonade, thus accompanying the overarching narrative of black female empowerment. Frictions between image and text present the starting point for an enquiry into the changes that contemporary lyric poetry undergoes when it “becomes pop.” Shaped by processes of circulation and reappropriation, Shire’s poems emerge as “memetic media.” Does this “meme-ification” of poetry, the digital mobilization and de-contextualization of poetic form, in turn affect the dynamics of poetic representation? A close reading of the texts as they are integrated into the visual album shows how Shire’s poems enter into a dialogue with Lemonade’s imagery, while remaining impervious to the narrative of positive transformation. In becoming “meme,” these poems retain their refractory qualities, thus presenting a design of lyric poetry for the contemporary mediascape.","PeriodicalId":44046,"journal":{"name":"WORD & IMAGE","volume":"1 1","pages":"152 - 159"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"WORD & IMAGE","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02666286.2020.1866970","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract The adaptation of texts by contemporary British-Somali poet Warsan Shire for Beyoncé’s visual album Lemonade, released in 2016, raises several questions about poetic representation in the twenty-first-century mediascape. Shire’s poems, which have been composed for a variety of media, ranging from print distribution to audio recordings to online circulation, serve as transitions between the musical tracks in Lemonade, thus accompanying the overarching narrative of black female empowerment. Frictions between image and text present the starting point for an enquiry into the changes that contemporary lyric poetry undergoes when it “becomes pop.” Shaped by processes of circulation and reappropriation, Shire’s poems emerge as “memetic media.” Does this “meme-ification” of poetry, the digital mobilization and de-contextualization of poetic form, in turn affect the dynamics of poetic representation? A close reading of the texts as they are integrated into the visual album shows how Shire’s poems enter into a dialogue with Lemonade’s imagery, while remaining impervious to the narrative of positive transformation. In becoming “meme,” these poems retain their refractory qualities, thus presenting a design of lyric poetry for the contemporary mediascape.
期刊介绍:
Word & Image concerns itself with the study of the encounters, dialogues and mutual collaboration (or hostility) between verbal and visual languages, one of the prime areas of humanistic criticism. Word & Image provides a forum for articles that focus exclusively on this special study of the relations between words and images. Themed issues are considered occasionally on their merits.