Writing About Technology Without Writing a Complaint Poem

Technology is the most complained-about subject in poetry and the most likely to be a rant. A judge on the three moves that turn a tech poem into a real one, the test that tells you if the poem is about the tech or about you, and the one image that always works.

Technology is the most complained-about subject in poetry, and it is the most likely to be a rant. Every contest pile has a stack of tech poems that are about the phone and the screen and the way we are all addicted, and the rant is the thing that makes the poem a complaint instead of a poem.

The tech poem that works is not about the technology. It is about the person who is using it.

The rant trap

The rant poem is the one that tells you how bad the technology is. The phone, the screen, the addiction, the way we are all losing our humanity. It is accurate and it is flat, because the technology is the subject and the subject is the one thing the reader already knows.

A poem about technology should not describe the technology. It should describe what the technology does to the person who is using it.

The three moves that turn a tech poem into a real one

Move one: put a person in it. The tech poem that works has a person in it, a child, a parent, a self. The technology is the stage; the person is the play. The poem is about the person in the technology, not the technology itself.

Move two: give the technology a body. The technology should be doing something to the body, the hands that are scrolling, the eyes that are looking at the screen, the neck that is bent. If the technology is just sitting there, it is a backdrop. If it is doing something to the body, it is a subject.

Move three: let the technology change you. The best tech poems are the ones where the speaker is different at the end than they were at the beginning, and the technology is the thing that changed them. The technology is the agent; the poem is the change.

The question that decides

Here is the question I ask when I am judging a tech poem: is this poem about the technology, or is it about the person in the technology? If the answer is the technology, it is a rant. If the answer is the person, it is a poem.

The rant poem says 'this is how bad it is'. The real tech poem says 'this is what the technology did to me'. The difference is the difference between a complaint and a life.

A worked example

Bad: 'I am addicted to my phone and I cannot stop scrolling and it is ruining my life.' The technology is the subject; the speaker is absent.

Better: 'I have learned to hold my phone the way my daughter holds hers, and I have become the person who knows what she is looking at by the way she holds it.' The technology is the agent; the speaker is the person who is changed by it. The poem is about the person who has been changed by the technology, not the technology itself.

Where it goes wrong

The trap is the poem that is a complaint about the technology. The complaint is not a poem; it is a rant. The poem is the thing that the technology did to the person who was in it, and the doing is the work.

If you want to see a tech poem that is about the person, the prompts library has a set on the digital and the self, and the contest window is open when the draft is ready. The technology is the stage. The person is the play.

Keep reading

For the craft side, the irony module covers the deeper method. The Instagram-poetry module is the page to read next, and the metaphor module is where the work goes when it is done.

By Writory Editorial, for Writory.

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