Article:

Stepping Into the River: Experiencing John Cayley's RIVERISLAND

In this paper I investigate the emergence of new writing and reading practices under the impact of digital media. Examining Cayley's poetic work riverIsland , I focus on what the poet himself calls “literal morphing.” These transformations of letters constitute, I argue, an important shift in poetic writing whose importance for literary analysis must be acknowledged. I conclude that poetic works in programmable media lead to a rethinking of concepts of surface and depth in relation to writing. Emerging works of art and literature in networked and programmable media receive increasing attention within new media studies communities and other cognate contexts. However, a fewer number of scholars within more established disciplines, such as in my field, literary studies, are simultaneously pushing to include digital forms of literature into their realm of study. Questions arise, however, of how to study them, what concepts, methods, and theories to employ, and, ultimately, how one should define the necessary skills and training of scholars. I will touch upon some of these important and pressing issues in this paper by reading a digital poetic work, riverIsland, by acclaimed poet and scholar John Cayley.