Literature & New Technologies

The typewriter, a machine for writing, produces letters on a page in a manner distinct from that of a pencil on a page or keyboard on a screen. Writers in the twentieth century, in fact, took advantage of the typewriter's capabilities and limitations to shape new "modern" responses to their worlds, one writer calling his work "typewriter calligraphy." We will begin with adventures in typewriting—close reading poems, studying methods and theories—and further our adventures by adding the tape recorder and digital media to the mix. What do you get if you put a typewriter and a tape recorder together? What does digital poetry tell us about the static character of the typewritten page? Also, we will delve into experiments like these that can engage us with the technology as writers: write a Manifesto of New Technology and Writing; design (e.g., on a typewriter) a page of type for sounds (including your voice) recorded in a public environment.