From line to design : a reading of Derek Beaulieu's digital poetry

Abstract AR

In the process of electronic communication, even in its most aesthetic and poetic aspects, the identity of both of the sender and the recipient seems to be completely diminished.

In its veiling of essential human data such as gender, nationality, ethnicity…etc, e-poetics seems to break the conventional author-reader connection.

It does not permit much, if any, presupposed agreements upon common human and aesthetic values.

Such “e-distribution of thought, or e-philosophy” (Beaulieu 2002) (6), as Beaulieu terms it, seems to devoid conventional author-reader agreement upon, at least, one common aspect such as time, space, context, emotions, or any mutual human concerns.

The question that comes to mind here is: does not such deliberate dissociation of actual author-reader connection, both explicit and implicit, create other hidden forms of e-associations? Does not such a staunch attack upon the egoistic presence of both of reader and author open the back door for another collective ego that, at least virtually, shares the same aesthetic interests of claimed omnipotence presence? This paper, therefore, will attempt to answer these questions in the light of the work of most recent Canadian e-poet, critic and publisher; Derek Beaulieu.