VANESSA DAOU

About JOE SENT ME | BarcelonaPoesia2008

THE CODES

The poems are meant to be played manually

On THE POEM and THE HOOK the text pieces are movable - the words and letters can be rearranged and reorganized - viewers are invited to send me their screenshots of their versions of my poems here -

LOVE LIVES is written with a disappearing text code - if you move your cursor over it, the letters will vanish - The reader can choose to erase some of the words so that the poem can be re-written and re-interpreted - once again, viewers are invited to send me snapshotss of their versions

For DREAM, the 2 audio segments - mine and Daniel Sisla's - are meant to be played at the same time_ you can choose to play the audio segments all at once_ the page is meant to be a flexible and fluid experience

"Poetry is the code for human emotions.", Lawrence Ferlinghetti, from Poetry as Insurgent Art

The idea behind JOE SENT ME | BarcelonaPoesia2008 was inspired by a recent walk in New York City's Time Square, and my memory of a trip I made to Barcelona in 2006. What I remember most about the city was its uniquely dynamic and vibrant clash of the myriad sounds of the Spanish Language, the co-mingling of its cultures and countries.

I have always loved the sounds of words. However, in and of themselves words mean nothing until and unless meaning is provided or attached. Through poetry, though, meaning can be sensed, gleaned, inferred, intuited, without the frustration that follows the incomprehension of plain language. Poetry can be found in the most fleeting things, in the glow of a streetlamp on a dusky day, in the hum of someone's murmurs dimly heard through thin walls.

I've created JOE SENT ME | BarcelonaPoesia to reflect the way my mind reconstructs my memory of Barcelona: thoughts of the city live and breath in a vivid and tangible way. I've selected the poems from JOE SENT ME which were written during my several journeys to Spain from 2004-2006.

The aim for my presentation for this symposium is to break down each poem into its component parts: word/page    sound/mouth    structure/form    rhythm/repetition    reader/interpreter    eye/viewer    meaning/intonation   imagination/interpretation

I have conceived of this page as a "living" document, where each poem takes on a life of its own outside of the writer and the written hand. The internet provides the perfect vehicle for the nuances of poetry, for the transportation of its substance, for the transmission of its message through time. For me, raw computer coding languages hold within them pure poetic potential: the hope is to shape new ways of perceiving technology and its relation to language, music, things remembered, things heard, reflection, recollection and the spoken word.

Many thanks to Raul Vincent Enriquez who has shed his sonic insight into my poems, and to Greta Byrum who shared her ear & expertise with their recording at Recorded Books, New York City.

Special thanks to Daniel Sisla, guest Poet at the Barcelona Poesia 2008 symposium, and who has so perceptively and impeccably created Catalan translations of LOVE LIVES, DREAM, and INTO THE NIGHT.

Vanessa Daou
19.05.08

Barcelona 2006