Welcome to the Game Poets Society (GPS)
Over a year and a half ago, the idea for this website was conceived, and over a year and a half later, it has finally come to fruition.
A number of catalysts sparked the decision to create this website and the poetry it contains, not the least of which was the sheer deficit of existing videogame poetry, high quality or otherwise. A certain video game poetry collection also had a great deal to do with GPS’s creation, as it further confirmed our hypothesis that no good video game poetry exists. Our interest and our goal is to take this void in gaming culture and filling it with our own writings. Other existing literature on video gaming consists of journalistic works and fanfiction, neither of which is our focus.
Fanfiction currently resides as the only popular method of extrapolating concepts from video games in a literary sense, and the differences between our poetry and fanfiction is something that we think needs to be noted here.
Where fanfiction almost exclusively consists of characters from video games portrayed in author-determined situations where the plot is most important, poetry focuses more intently on the method and tone with which the message is being delivered. A fanfiction will chronicle a character’s actions and hijinks in situations outside of the actual game, but the poem’s tendrils are capable of far more elaborate feats.
The poem can take concepts, philosophies, implied paradigms, character qualities, conflicts, and an infinite number of other motes of thought, and convert them into a moment. The poem is a moment in time where through one small cluster of language, the author vividly reveals his message, and the reader vividly grasps it and conforms it to his own. The poem does not use language to convey a theme, but bends language to its will, and molds it to create an art form that can only be observed by an appraisal of the emotion behind the syntax.
That is poetry, and we are video game poets.
We will update twice a week, once on Monday and again on Friday, with a poem and at least one corresponding news post. Also, we will never miss an update with regards to factors that are under our control. This is a commitment we give completely to our readers. The types of poetry represented will vary greatly, covering such styles as free form, blank verse, sestinas, sonnets, swap quatrains (yeah, we hadn’t heard of it before either). Every poem will be available for you the reader to comment on, preferably at length. Every poem is an unfinished piece, and we implore our readers to comment constructively (with either praise or the more necessary critique) so that we may continually refine our works. We hope to inspire discussion with each poem, and form a community to further the advance of video game literature.
