Grocott's Mail
  • NEWS
    • Courts & Crime
    • Features
    • Politics
    • People
    • Health & Well-being
  • SPORT
    • News
    • Results
    • Sports Diary
    • Club Contacts
    • Columns
    • Sport Galleries
    • Sport Videos
  • OPINION
    • Election Connection
    • Makana Voices
    • Deur ‘n Gekleurde Bril
    • Newtown… Old Eyes
    • Incisive View
    • Your Say
  • ARTSLIFE
    • Cue
    • Makana Sharp!
    • Visual Art
    • Literature
    • Food & Fun
    • Festivals
    • Community Arts
    • Going Places
  • OUR TOWN
    • What’s on
    • Spiritual
    • Emergency & Well-being
    • Safety
    • Civic
    • Municipality
    • Weather
    • Properties
      • Grahamstown Properties
    • Your Town, Our Town
  • OUTSIDE
    • Enviro News
    • Gardening
    • Farming
    • Science
    • Conservation
    • Motoring
    • Pets/Animals
  • ECONOMIX
    • Business News
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Personal Finance
  • EDUCATION
    • Education NEWS
    • Education OUR TOWN
    • Education INFO
  • Covid-19
  • EDITORIAL
Facebook Twitter Instagram
Trending
  • Ward Two residents buy own floodlights to combat cable theft
  • A town without a playground: where do the children play?
  • Women, Politics, Power, Patriachy: A feminist lens
  • Makhanda’s Links Royal House Gaokx’aob (Chief) has died
  • What’s On – 30 March – 6 April
  • Unapologetically queer and Black consciousness approach to live performance
  • EPRU competition kicks off this coming Saturday
  • Rotary’s upgrade of water and sanitation at Ntsika Secondary School
Facebook Twitter Instagram
Grocott's Mail
  • NEWS
    • Courts & Crime
    • Features
    • Politics
    • People
    • Health & Well-being
  • SPORT
    • News
    • Results
    • Sports Diary
    • Club Contacts
    • Columns
    • Sport Galleries
    • Sport Videos
  • OPINION
    • Election Connection
    • Makana Voices
    • Deur ‘n Gekleurde Bril
    • Newtown… Old Eyes
    • Incisive View
    • Your Say
  • ARTSLIFE
    • Cue
    • Makana Sharp!
    • Visual Art
    • Literature
    • Food & Fun
    • Festivals
    • Community Arts
    • Going Places
  • OUR TOWN
    • What’s on
    • Spiritual
    • Emergency & Well-being
    • Safety
    • Civic
    • Municipality
    • Weather
    • Properties
      • Grahamstown Properties
    • Your Town, Our Town
  • OUTSIDE
    • Enviro News
    • Gardening
    • Farming
    • Science
    • Conservation
    • Motoring
    • Pets/Animals
  • ECONOMIX
    • Business News
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Personal Finance
  • EDUCATION
    • Education NEWS
    • Education OUR TOWN
    • Education INFO
  • Covid-19
  • EDITORIAL
Grocott's Mail
You are at:Home»Uncategorized»Image macros: a new poetic form
Uncategorized

Image macros: a new poetic form

EditorBy EditorMarch 26, 20151 Comment2 Mins Read
Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email

An American indie literary movement self-styled ‘Alt Lit’ is doing something a little bit differently. They're using the internet to change how we think about and interpret poetry.

An American indie literary movement self-styled ‘Alt Lit’ is doing something a little bit differently. They're using the internet to change how we think about and interpret poetry.

Alongside the blog-style candour of their prose-writing counterparts, Alt Lit poets are using image macros to communicate visually as well as verbally. 

Simply put, an image macro is text layered over an image, often, though not always, a moving image. 

For this reason, some of the poetry being produced by the likes of The Mall editor Angela Shier and Internet Poetry editor Michael Hessel-Mial cannot be read or published in a physical form like a book, or printed on paper. 
It is the poetry of the internet.

This Alt Lit poetry style entails supplementing words with clips from common internet sites, memes or GIFs that support the poetry. 
GIF stands for Graphic Interchange Format and in this context refers to a moment or two of silent film from an iconic television show or movie. 

The image plays on a continuous loop and is usually captioned with the words spoken by the character in the clip. 
These GIFs are often used to make social commentary and are usually humorous in intention. 

Now using GIFs, memes and even the Google Searchbar to write poetry, poets are able to say more than words usually allow.

Image macros is essentially a new poetic form, rather than a genre, and allows for multiple interpretations of the written words layered over the moving image or meme. 

This plurality of interpretations stems from the different meanings and references different people take from popular culture and the internet.
This in turn adds a layer of understanding to the already complex project of decoding poetry. 

Looking to the internet for meaning-making might seem like the end for many poetry purists.

But then again, William Blake was doing something not all together dissimilar with his ‘illuminated writing’ in the 17th century. 
He just didn’t have the internet. 

Previous ArticleUnderstanding autism
Next Article Rhodes student loses his arm in sewage works
Editor

Comments are closed.

Tweets by Grocotts
Newsletter



Listen

The Rhodes University Community Engagement Division has launched Engagement in Action, a new podcast which aims to bring to life some of the many ways in which the University interacts with communities around it. Check it out below.

Humans of Makhanda

Humans of Makhanda

Weather    |     About     |     Advertise     |     Subscribe     |     Contact     |     Support Grocott’s Mail

© 2023 Maintained by School of Journalism & Media Studies.

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.