[Steve Bucknell]

I think The Cool Web is a good starting-point for the poems I'm looking for, Ed. You'll have to write it. Is the Web Cool? Is the way we use the Web just a natural extension of the way we control and organise ourselves, using words to keep the dark at bay?

I wasn't really interested in "new forms of poetry", but in the poetry that continually tries to describe and witness the human condition. I suppose I'm looking for The Waste Land written in an age when many of us exist more vividly in cyberspace in our "e-personalities" than we do when we walk across London Bridge.

Perhaps I'm looking for a new take on Heaney's Digging," between my finger and my thumb/The squat pen rests." Will children use pens for much longer?

I agree that the Internet is still very "new", but I sense that it will move towards being a "front and centre" rather than a "backdrop" phenomenon. I don't think it's " just another bit of technology". It colonises our mental, social and cultural space like nothing else. It changes us in ways we don't understand. I'm looking for poets and poems that help me understand those changes. I think I've heard it described as "our migration into cyberspace." I can see that.

As Susan says, most of the poetry about the Internet that's out there is "Light Verse", and, perhaps, that's where the response is starting.

Apologies to Bill and all. I didn't read the thread thoroughly, just skimmed off a first impression. (I blame the Internet for my behaviour.)

Bill, I'm interested in on-line workshopping compared to real-time workshopping. I'm involved in both. I risk more in my crits on-line, but I carry a voice saying "tone it down, be more careful", but in face to face workshops I feel timid, with an opposing voice that says " for f*** sake say what you really think".

I'm in search of the experience, not the technology. I'm in search of the canonical rather than the Flarf.

When all else fails, I suppose I'll just have to sit at my screen (a shiny new one) and try to write something: light or clunky, canonical or not.

Bill, my favourite Error Haiku:

The Web site you seek
cannot be located but
endless others exist

--Joy Rothke (though I note this haiku seems to exist in other versions too!)

To my shame I haven't read Riddley Walker, but I have a copy and will start tomorrow!( Or I might just Google it.)