Editor's Note

Two very different writers appear side by side in this new posting of the redesigned New River: Stephanie Strickland, a well-known writer both in the world of poetry created for the page and in the digital world of poetry written to be read on screens; and Kathleen Dale, a poet relatively new to digital writing. Strickland’s Vniverse is an ambitious project, with a book manifestation (V: WaveSon.Nets/Losing L’Una, Penguin, 2002) and a web site, V: vniverse.com. The book is designed so that it can be read from either direction with both possibilities leading to the center where readers finds a title, “There Is a Woman in a Conical Hat,” and a URL, http://vniverse.com. Strickland has been writing digital poetry for several years now and this latest work of poetry and hypertext brilliantly explores the possibilities of digital writing to reshape the conventions of poetry. By hosting a mirror of the Vniverse web site here on the New River, we hope to bring more readers to Strickland’s poetry––and via an alternate route, one that begins with the hypertext and leads readers to the book, rather than the other way around. That alternate route will alter and I believe deepen the experience of the poetry. In addition to the mirror site of Vniverse, the New River is posting "Making the Vniverse," an original commentary on the project (with links to reviews) written by Strickland and her collaborator, Cynthia Lawson.

In comparison to Strickland, Dale’s project is rudimentary. She has written a single, lovely poem and used the digital medium to augment it with sound and imagery.

Dale and Strickland are two poets at different stages in the exploration of digital writing. The New River is happy to bring their work to you.

-Ed Falco