Twine Poetry


Play "The Shark" here.


Artist's Statement

            I picked this poem because it used to scare me. My dad had it memorized and he would occasionally perform a dramatic recitation that included and ominous voice and him grabbing somebody at the end of the poem. The goal of this project is to replicate how I felt listening to this poem as a child. 
            Twine is a great medium for presenting rhythmic poems like this one. The positioning of the words is intended to mimic the way my father would speak them, as well as the potential tone. Words that are lower on the page reflect a lower tone. The words that are linked were also chosen intentionally. The main linked word on each page is usually the most threatening of the line. The linked word tends to linger in the mind of the audience, creating the intended unsettling feeling. The selection of the words on each screen is also important. For me, poetry takes a long time to understand, especially if I’m reading it out of a book or a single screen. By dividing the lines up, I’ve tried to not only promote understanding and careful reading/analysis but also focus attention for dramatic effect. For example, take the line “He's a gulper, a ripper, a snatcher, a grabber.” In Twine, each section of the sentence receives its own screen. This assists the viewer in focusing attention on something unpleasant, which contributes to the tone of the poem and Twine game. The colors are also selected with purpose. Red is traditionally a color of fear, and perhaps not so coincidentally the color of blood, which is what I hope is at the back of the audience’s mind as they go through the game. Red is chosen for the linked words for the same reason those words were chosen to be linked. The white and black are chosen to contrast the red of the linked words, and to give the audience the heebie-jeebies. 
            Throughout the creation of this project, I thought about interaction versus immersion. The poem is easy to interact with via Twine, but immersion could go either way. I decided to sacrifice what could potentially detract from full immersion and create other connections throughout the poem. These additions are all true, being either unsettling facts about sharks or real reports of shark attacks. The poem is supposed to be scary, and these tidbits add to the experience, though they make distract readers from the poem for a while. 
            At the very least, I hope that readers of the poem will use caution whilst swimming in the ocean.  

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