Poetry Archive Now Wordview 2020: Computer Generated Images

we grew up on html

 

love was a cartoon heart

pink or red

we dissected some cold slab of meat in science labs

and with that, every Disney film turned dirty

 

we would publicise our most private thoughts

kidding ourselves it was poetry

when it was catharsis at best

 

love was chat rooms and msn

love was xxx

love was taken back to the times of courtly love

letters on screens and stomachs

would flip, not with the touch or grip of your crush

but a bedroom blush at the flash from offline to online

 

love was romance

love was distance

love was a flicker in the periphery

but it always ended in a request for a naked photograph

 

<b> asl? </b>

<P>

<a href=”http://canilinkyou.com”>

<P>

<P>

 

we grew up on html

 

we edited our lives to make them look better

with sepia and high contrast

with hearts and smilies

we proclaimed our friends as the best in the world

placed them on pedestals

but cried to ourselves when we weren’t number one

on their top friend’s list on MySpace

 

we grew up on html

but we never truly understood the language

we communicated

a love that was not love at all

xxx

Recording provided as part of Poetry Archive Now: Wordview 2020. Used by permission of the author. The poem was recorded by Muddy Feet Poetry @muddyfeetpoetry.

Poetry Archive Now Wordview 2020 Winners

Welcome to the Poetry Archive Now! WordView 2020 Collection. For the first time the Archive opened its doors wide to poets from around ...

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Carmina Masoliver

Carmina Masoliver is a poet from London. She has been sharing her poetry on both the page and the stage for over a decade, and her latest book ‘Circles’ is published by Burning Eye Books (2019) and is an illustrated epic poem. Carmina was long-listed for the Young Poet Laureate for London award (2013), the inaugural Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowships (2017) and the Out-Spoken Prize in Performance Poetry (2018).

A special thank you to our WordView 2020 poets.

Chair of the Judging Panel, Imtiaz Dharker, says: “The hundreds of entries we received blew in to the Archive like a breath of pure, unpolluted air from all over the world, revealing something of the time we are living in, some telling it straight, some slant. It was exciting to check in to the Poetry Archive’s Youtube channel every morning and come upon one unexpected voice after another."

See the collectionWatch the full Wordview 2020 playlist
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