A very online subjectivity: Poetry, embodiment and digital spaces

Abstract

In 1991, Marjorie Perloff wrote, in her book Radical Artifice, that modern media challenges poetics to engage in a ‘dialectic between the simulacrum and the other, a dialectic no longer between the image and the real … but between the word and the image’ (1991, p. 92). She further acknowledged how digital technology had altered the relationship between reader and text through new formats and possibilities of interaction, but also asked ‘(W)hat about its effect on our human interactions?’ (Perloff, 1991, p. 188). This article focuses on three contemporary Australian poetry publications, varying in format and presentation – Shastra Deo’s ‘Self-Portrait as Goro Majima’ (2019); Devotionals by Marcus Whale (2018); and Holly Isemonger’s digital chapbook Deluxe Paperweight (2016) – all of which navigate concepts of anonymity, authenticity, the (un)returned gaze, and the experience of physical alienation in digital spaces. Through close reading and analysis of these works, and drawing on interviews (conducted by the author of this article) with the respective poets, this article considers the possibilities of constructing self and subjectivity in the digital age in poetry and digital spaces.