[Newspoetry] HTML ideas for Newspomes

[William Gillespie]

ideas for writing newspoetry:

1. start with a source text, as you rewrite it, add color to the bits
you rewrote.
Alternatively, do this exercise with a friend, each of you choosing a
color
to make the text a map of your collaboration. Color is effortless on the
web,
but expensive on paper.

2. Take a source text and break it into lines. Add a line between each
of its lines. Make your lines one font size smaller than the original.

3. Make a table with one row and two columns. Talk about a news story
with a friend, then each of you write a small poem for one of the
columns.

4. Find words which, when letters are removed, become other words. Use
the blink tag for those letters.

5. Take a photo from a news sourse and write your own caption. Or just
write your own caption.

6. Find the same story in three different sources. Write a stanza for
each source.

7. Write a small hypertext about a subject on which you find your own
opinion sharply divided. Make each link a link to a frameset, such that,
as the reader navigates through the hypertext, their screen becomes
divided into many screens. With each subsequent frameset, decrease the
font size by one, such that the text gets denser as the screen becomes
more subdivided. Or have the frames call up, ultimately, the newspoetry
frameset itself.

8. Rewrite or write a small song. Write out the chords and also make a
simple recording.

9. Take a photo from the newspaper, draw on it, and scan it in.

or

Make a drawing of a photo from the newspaper, scan it in. Alter it using
software.

10. Type a word that is the first word in a sentence. Make each letter a
link to a word that could be the second word in the sentence. Do the
same with each second word, and third word, etcetera, until the
sentences all end. Example:

S -> the bombing
T -> the shooting
O -> taxation
P -> working

11. Take a text from the news. Make it into a Subliminal Sentence: take
each letter of the text and make it the first letter of a word. Make the
entire Subliminal Sentence and the original texts links to each other to
create a two-page hypertext.

12. Take two headlines the same number of words in length. Make your way
from one headline to the other by changing one word at a time. Make the
resulting headlines a linear hypertext such that clicking on one takes
you to the next. Make the process reverse itself at the end to make an
endless circular hypertext.

13. Write a letter to a politician.

14. XML news: take a newsstory and add appropriate tags for its various
parts
       (14a. write a new DTD specific to that newsstory.)

15. Create a weird table, with lots of rowspan and colspan tags. Make
sure it's consistent across browsers. Then write a poem with a stanza in
each cell.

16. Write a CGI-script that will allow the reader to insert a few words,
and will compose a new newsstory using those words. Like: Q. What is
your solution to the war in Kosovo? A. Divorce Clinton Q: What is your
name? A: Hillary. Headline: HILLARY SOLVES KOSOVO CRISIS.

Side note. Crimes rates are down. Imprisonment rates grow even faster.
      Physicians are just beginning to figure out how to profit from
alternative medicine.