Poetry Interventions

Project Overview:

Live poetry game for StAnza International Poetry Festival, “One-to-one bespoke performances from our strolling players”

Roles and responsibilities

Design

Nonlinear narrative design

Writing

Writing 20 poems, topic research, pitching

Process and approach

Process

I prepared 20 poems using the most common 20 English nouns as prompts, and approached strangers in the Byre Theatre to ask if they would like to hear a poem. With their permission, using their response, I tried to match one of the nouns they used with one of the 20 poems.

Approach

I wrote and performed Poetry Interventions for 2 years with StAnza International Poetry Festival, creating a branching path gamified poetry experience which enabled user choice within written story systems.

Tools and technologies

Flowchart

Sample of work

SAMPLE

Team collaboration

Internal

Commissioned after winning the StAnza Poetry Slam

Client-side

Rapidly responded to player choice in live interactive/immersive setting, time management to ensure show runtime was consistent

Result and impact

Engaged people across St Andrews with poetry, raised profile of the festival

Reflection and improvement

It was my first real exploration of non-linear and instanced storytelling - I’d come from a poetry perspective. It was great to have people tell me that they felt really listened to, and sparked my enjoyment of responsive media - and I’ve chased that ever since!