APOSTROPHE Book Launch Party April 19, 2006

Darren + Bill + 5 robots + the second person pronoun = APOSTROPHE

WHAT?

Darren Wershler-Henry and Bill Kennedy would like to invite you to the
launch of their new book from ECW Press, APOSTROPHE.

NO, REALLY. WHAT IS APOSTROPHE?

a) a figure of speech in which a person, an abstract quality, or a
nonexistent entity is addressed as though present;
b) a poem written in 1993 in which every sentence is an apostrophe;
c) a program ? apostropheengine.ca ? based on the 1993 poem that hijacks
search engines in order to extend the poem infinitely;
d) a book of poetry written using the Web site;

or

The answer: e) all of the above.

Bill Kennedy and Darren Wershler-Henryšs APOSTROPHE is, as far as they know,
the first book ever written by a search engine. Each line from the original
poem has become the title of a new poem generated by five robots on a
metonymic romp through the World Wide Web.

APOSTROPHE is an entirely new and very old kind of poetry, epic and lyrical
by turns. Neither stable nor unstable, sections come and go, but the overall
shape of the poem remains vaguely familiar, like a trick of memory.

At the launch, Darren & Bill will debut apostropheengine.ca, the Internet
home of the computer program that gave birth to the poetry in their new
book. Projecting their web site to movie screen proportions, they will
interact with audience members to show how the apostrophe robots search use
engines to generate live poetry. They will be joined on stage by poet Ken
Babstock for a discussion on the role of the poet in the creation of such
work.