PROCEED: a cookbook for poems
I’m excited to share a new side project. It’s PROCEED, a digital zine for procedural poetry.
What is procedural poetry?
Procedural poetry is any text that is generated according to a replicable procedure. Examples include John Cage’s chance operations, Christian Bök’s Eunoia, Darius Kazemi’s Twitter bots. A procedure is a recipe that a human &/or computer chef follows to cook a poem.
Why create PROCEED?
A few reasons! I want to promote an underrepresented movement in poetry. I want to push forward writing as a technology. I want to create new interfaces for reading and generating text.
What do I mean by new interfaces? Let’s go back to the cooking analogy. A good recipe interface consists of a set of instructions, an illustration of the finished product, and variations or alternate ingredients.
Accordingly, a good interface for procedural poetry should include the following 3 Ps:
- Procedure. The mechanism through which the poem is produced.
- Poem. The output of the procedure.
- Parameters. Configurations that modify the output of the poem.
PROCEED aims to be a cookbook brimming with good recipes.
What will it look like?
I am still figuring that out. Something like this:
In a nutshell, every poem can be read, re-generated, and forked. It’s a complete picture of procedural poetry.
How can I submit?
Thanks for your interest! I am taking submissions here and will launch an actual website given enough interest. I hope to launch the first issue in January 2015.
What else do I need to know?
My plan is for PROCEED itself to be procedurally generated. The contents, the release schedule, & the price point of the zine will be automated and not entirely under my control.