The Contemporary Poetry Ecology: Production, Reception, and Plurality

This article posits an ecological reading of poetry production and reception. While an individualist/isolationist view has long formed the prevalent approach to poetry, our contemporary digital landscape instead highlights the complex interrelationships between the many people, places, platforms and other entities involved in poetic processes. The hyperconnectivity afforded by new media (Hoskins 2018) has recently prompted a multidisciplinary shift towards ecological ways of thinking, most notably in experimental psychology (Gibson 1979), media ecology (Postman 1968; Nystrom 1973; McLuhan 1977), and cognitive ecologies (Hoskins 2009; Hutchins 2010). Drawing on this rich scholarship, and on Nissel’s visual model of the contemporary UK poetry ecology –informed by Timothy Morton’s mesh, Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizomes, and Bruno Latour’s Actor Network Theory– this article explores the interconnectedness of the production and reception of poetry.

In 2005, Marjorie Perloff stated, ‘Seeing, hearing, and performing: in the internet age these take on a rather different valence from the poetries of the eighties’ (133). Another twenty years later, the hybrid age of poetry publishing and events and the participatory culture of Web 2.0 have once again transformed the way we write, read, and think about poetry. How might the plurality of planes in which poetry is produced and read/experienced add to its multivalence? To discuss this, the authors will reflect on their respective experiences from their roles in literary magazines, Spelt and The Passionfruit Review, social media in the poetry community, and the Tears in the Fence and Stay-at-Home! literary festivals.

Nissel, Parsons, and Nash’s intervention into individualist approaches extends to the writing and editing process of this article itself. Using a collaborative approach, each responds to the previous piece in sequence, offering an opportunity to respond creatively, such as with illustrations of ecological models and collaboratively written poetry, alongside traditional essay material.