E-poetry : Between image and performance, a cultural analysis

From a cultural studies point of view, electronic or e-poetry is more than just an "object," a "genre," or a "medium;" it is a cultural practice or a "cultural form" in Raymond Williams' words (1975). In this paper, we will tackle some of the issues raised by such a perspective, which will be cultural rather than technological and our starting point will be the relative ignorance toward e-poetry as a form. Indeed, compared to similar evolutions in other media, e-poetry is not only in quantitative terms small business - there has been no global shift from poetry in print to e-poetry as there has been, for instance, in photography or music - it is also in critical terms marginal and hardly researched, let alone thoroughly analyzed and described. E-poetry exists, but it hardly receives any critical attention compared to traditional, printed poetry. We can only regret this lack of interest, but unless we would assume that the e-poetry form is a non-entity reducible to a mere story of high-tech gadgetry deprived of any literary value, we can give no single answer to those willing to valorize or reject the literary and cultural importance of e-poetry. Actually, one can give two rather different answers and as we will try to show, one has to make a choice between them. Hence the aim of this article is threefold: first, to define the two major positions one can adopt when studying e-poetry (Part I); second, to give a more detailed presentation of e-poetry as a cultural form (Part II); and third, to illustrate the way in which e-poetry and print culture interact (Part III).