ABSTRACT
The author proposes a working definition for interstitial poetry (IP), and a conceptual framework for aligning IP with virtual environments (VEs), as a means to study affordance and influence between IP, VEs, and respective interactive agents (digital and human). In mapping IP with the archive metaphor, the author suggests that poetry in VEs is more than esoteric instantiations of text and performance by users of the VE or convenient gaming content added by developers; rather, it additionally functions to store (as information) and disseminate (as knowledge) the experiences of individuals and diasporas. Borrowing from interstitial literature (Fenkl 2003) and digital poetry (Funkhouser 2012) as the defining foundations of IP, and descriptions of virtual space (Kosari & Amoori 2018) as the underlying framework for VEs, the transformative potential of IP is demonstrated through the World of Warcraft Quest: ‘Alicia’s Poem.’ An interweaving of narratives and imagery takes the reader on an exploratory journey of pedagogy and poetry that intends on providing a vocabulary to associate with IP, contributing to scholarship underway in Creative Writing and New Media, and marking the unstable, paradoxical, and disruptive relationship between the interstice and poetry as IP’s most potent and distinguishing characteristic.
