About this site

DPAC is just getting going. We are in the early stages of organising ourselves and building the site, so there is no archival content here yet, just planning and background information.

However, we hope to begin presenting material to the public as early as this fall, with an official site launch sometime shortly after. We will also soon begin taking site memberships and establish a mailing list for news and announcements. So, please return regularly to check on our progress, and if you would like to get involved, please contact us.

Mission
The purposes of the society are:
a) to preserve and digitize endangered electronic recordings and artworks relevant to Canadian poetry;
b) to create a public archive of collected materials for educational and cultural purposes;
c) to publish commercial educational resources for the study of Canadian poetry and poetics;
d) to promote and partner with individuals and cultural organizations involved in the development of digital poetry.

Bitrot, media failure, and format obsolescence.
The short life span of 1970-80’s magnetic recording technologies means that a valuable part of Canadian literary heritage is in danger of being lost entirely. The 1990’s floppy disk technology, and concurrent formats of 8mm video, VHS, and so on have also been cast into redundancy and are becoming more difficult to save every day.

Pulling flotsam out of the churn.
Although print archives have dominated the concerns of national heritage, a profound cultural and technological shift from print to electronic media is changing the legacy of the literary community at large. Thus, without immediate and careful preservation, a vital link between Canada’s modernist and digital cultures will be lost to history. The heritage of performance poetry, early digital artworks, and recorded dialogues and discussions needs careful consolidation and maintenance for future generations of Canadians and for interest and studies in global poetries.

Goals
Our goal is to gather together a representative corpus, transfer onto more enduring formats, upgrade quality and edit selections for public access. Edited editions produced in high quality DVD or other optical formats will be prepared for publication and sold to institutions and the public, with any profit from sales over the costs of production going to the artists and creators.

At this early stage we are also considering other long-range complementary programs, such as residencies or exhibitions.

The goal of our society is not only to preserve valuable historical documents of Canadian literary heritage, but also to work toward making these widely accessible in online viewing/reading formats.

Rationale
This important public service is not presently being met by any Canadian organization and thus it requires immediate yet technically competent and astute implementation. In addition, we strive to bring the discussion of technological media and information-age literacies into a poetic context for the purpose of demonstrating their importance to educators and young writers, and to promote public awareness and appreciation of Canadian language arts in the digital age. In the process of creating this corpus of Canadian digital poetry and poetics during the past 40 years, a period of continuous re-mediation, we will articulate an aesthetic that should remain open to vigorous discussion, even contention. To maintain a critical focus for research in a variety of disciplines, an online journal of articles and feedback will be maintained and be open access for DPAC members.

Method
Our digital archives will be maintained in high resolution audio and video, and modern open-standards based formats for digital media. The technical goals will be for best long-term preservation; the product will be a publicly accessible website for reference and participation, and income will be generated by creating best-quality archival publications and products beneficial for any research based institution, particularly universities and public libraries.

The initial focus will be on representing the transitional period of recorded poetries and poetics (1970s and on); the working definition of poetry used by the society is meant to broadly encompass language based works of art in the digital medium, which can include both video documentation, orphaned-format hypertext creations, video poems, animations using letters or illustrating audio texts, audio artworks ranging from sound poetry to computer-read or generated texts, digital graphics, and so on. The representation of poetics from the period will be broadly encompassing recorded live discussions or early network Bulletin Board and List Serve dialogues. We also intend to collaborate and share resources with other similar archives held worldwide, and therefore to promote the interests of Canadian culture abroad.

About the Digital Poetry Archive of Canada
Our society brings together people who have expertise as poets and media artists, archivists, collectors, researchers, educators, scholars, computer technicians, web developers, event producers, publishers, and so on, in a public framework meant to enhance cultural dialogue, collaboration, and understanding of language arts in the 21st century. We will work with governments, universities, schools, technology and cultural sectors to expand the creative use, presence and development of digital culture. As such, our work takes two directions, toward providing safe-keeping and sustainable maintenance of an archive that preserves digital literary heritage, and outreach through web, disc and print publishing, as well as related public events concerned with either public presentation or policy and advocacy. We intend to work with educational and research institutions to gather, promote, and distribute the corpus. A common, shared resource of Canada’s contemporary literary practices and the heritage of post-print poetics and poetries will be invaluable; technological churn and aging media leaves us with a now-or-never situation. The Canadian public have a right to know and share in this cultural legacy currently vanishing.