This website presents a random abstract photo from an open source collection on pexel along with a random project from the prompt Twenty Little Poetry Projects created by Jim Simmerman and published in “The Practice of Poetry.” After pressing go, the user must complete the project ekphrastically (within the context of the random image) in one line of poetry or more.
In the future, I would like to expand from twenty poetry projects and 100 abstract photos to fifty poetry projects and 200 abstract photos. There will also be a form so that each time a project is completed the user can submit it (each submission will be associated with the project prompt and the abstract image that it was ekphrastically written from). This website will allow me to experiment with coauthoring by creating algorithms that combine lines written by multiple poets. For instance, I could combine twenty project completions that were written within the context of the same image, but the projects could have been completed by two or more poets. The result would be a co-authored Twenty Little Poetry Projects poem. When poets are using the website individually, they are simultaneously collaborating on the same collection of algorithmic poems.
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