Possessed by glitch. Poetics of digital errors in printed poems

Abstract

In the field of electronic media glitch is defined as a breach in the surface of one system that opens a brief insight into otherwise deeply hidden digital structures. An alien element visible on the screen due to unprovoked malfunctions in hardware’s or software’s operating is often interpreted from the vantage point of posthumanism. This perspective impacts the way digital failures, that are intentionally applied, function within the frame of glitch poetry – also when it is printed in paper editions which consequently involves the phenomenon of retrograde remediation.  The vast majority of printed examples scrutinized in this paper consists of volumes by Warsaw neolinguists and publishing hub Rozdzielczość Chleba. In their manifestos the authors representing both groups diagnosed a radical shift in the paradigm of art creation towards new media. They highlighted the desired openness to collaboration in the process of text production with computers connected to the internet that flood their users with glitches, unsolicited e-mails and advertisements. Parallelly, these poets announced the downfall of printed books associated, according to the manifestos, with the postromantic model of the poem as a subjective monologue.

Analog glitch poetry, which goal is to reveal the conflict of two paradigms, often takes on the form of post-digital artistic books that feature dominant graphic effects stifling the verbal message and in so doing they offer samples of 21st-century esoteric abstractionism. Glitch poetry may also function as an allegedly traditional black text printed on a white sheet of paper, yet a one that combines human-readable words and phrases with anti-phonetic digital failures expressed in non-alphanumeric characters.