Individual Work
Space Conquest: A Computer Poem

"Space Conquest: A Computer Poem" is an example of a computational poetic production by Canadian poet Earle Birney (1904-1995) created in 1968. Birney published the piece in 1969 in grOnk agazine as part of his "pnomes, jukollages and other stunzas" (volume 4, series 3). The poem is a 15 x 11 printout and provides the following information: "Created at the University of Waterloo, Ont., February ’68. 12 Lines chosen from 1066 5-Syllable Lines Supplied by a Computer Programmed to a Random Order of the Words Composing [George] Meredith's 'Lucifer in Starlight' and [Archibald] MacLeish's 'End of the World.' Printed on an IBM/360 Computer For Inclusion in Gronk 2 Series 4."

grOnk magazine was published by bpNichol, David Aylward, and Rob Hindley-Smith and was in print from 1967-1988.

References

Emerson, Lori. “grOnk magazine, fourth series: issues 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7 1968-1971 (part 6),” https://loriemerson.net/2012/01/16/gronk-magazine-fourth-series-issues-1..., Accessed June 2018.

Irvine, Dean. “Mission Control: An Operator’s Manual for Compulibratories,” Amodern 4: The Poetry Series, March 2015. http://amodern.net/article/mission-control/. Accessed June 2018.

Irvine, Dean, Vanessa Lent, and Bart Vautour, ed. Making Canada New: Editing, Modernism, and New Media. Toronto: U of T, 2017.

Discussion

This entry needs expansion:

- speak to the computational processes
- images/scans
- literary qualities
- revise author name to First Last order
- discussion of the work itself rather than what the work says about itself