Make it Tall

Back in the early 1990s I was teaching at a newly-minted and deeply underfunded university in the Northeast. I remember having a chat with an art tutor who was teaching sculpture. She praised the enthusiasm and talent of her students but said there was just one problem: not enough space. The students were crammed into a studio meant for a fraction of their number and they were falling over one another as they worked. This had seemed like a problem at first, but there was an interesting side-effect. In trying to find room for themselves all the students had made sculptures that were tall and narrow, like flowers in a meadow crowding upwards to the sun. The result was a rather striking degree show.

The Internet is changing writing in a similar way. While the vast amount of unregulated space means there is now more to read than ever, not all of it good, formats like blogs are changing the way writers work. Here's a poet making blogging work for her in ways that would have been practically unimaginable fifteen years ago: soundofsplinters. And here's another. (links via)

Posted by Chris Routledge