In the second release of 2017 Nokturno once again brings you a selection of contemporary poetry from authors of digital and experimental poetry. The works range from video poetry to procedural poetry, and their setting from prison mines to space.

Eight works by graphic designer Arja Karhumaa are selected from a larger whole, her Epägenesis book. The book is part of her PhD thesis and addresses questions of readability and visuality of a text through  artistic research. British Hugovk works with programming and is nowadays also a poetry creator, living in Finland. His Twitter bot New Finnish Words @uudetssanat generates, as the name aptly suggests, new Finnish words based on existing ones. The bot tweets the words as constant flow.

Nokturno also presents four video pieces from Subliimit tulkinnat, a joint project by visual artist Pauliina Pesonen and author Jolin Slotte. Their videos draw from the textual mass of news flow and question the concepts of momentariness and objectivity associated to the news genre. We also present a solo work from Jolin Slotte, Att rekonstruera en mor, which deals with the author’s recollections of her mother and the concept of remembering itself. This set also presents the poetry video/short movie Helvetinjumalankone, based on the poem of Ville Hytönen. Work group also included Sanna Larmola, Kivi Larmola and Ari Taskinen.

Mari Laaksonen and Frankie Shannon take their listener to a hypnotic journey to the soundscapes of quietness and peace in space. Valitse hetki is based on a performance with the same name. The question of readability present in Arja Karhumaa’s work pops up again in the series Alphabetized poems by Volodymyr Bilyk where the frustrated poet has dismembered his unsuccesful poems and alphabetized them.

The site has also been complemented with more poetry previously published at nokturno.org. There are now interviews and discussions on poetry available on the site, and even more visual and concrete poetry.

Please continue to send us your digital and experimental poems, or anything poetry related that finds it home in the digital world! Deadline for submissions to Nokturno 3-2017 is 5th of June.

(image: Mari Laaksonen & Frankie Shannon)