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From Myth to History: Poetry as an Interactive Medium by Sophia Madouvalou and Kostas Gouliamos

Whenever we pick a collection of poetry or read a story we are confronted with the articulation of mythologies / myths and the structure of the mass media.

These myths do more than simply constitute a symbolic discourse - they work in subtle ways to persuade the readers to accept socio-cultural and aesthetic patterns.

Our analysis - presentation is a revealing study of the myth poets gather and use from various media sources or formations and of the crucial underlying assumptions a reader makes. We reveal how mythologies are filtrated and framed as myths and then how and why these myths chosen by means of poetics. In our presentation we sketch out a communication model and apply it to the poetic representation. We consider poetry not as written form (this practice constitutes a minimalist reduction) but as the holistic form of an active experience based on interaction through the use of multi-media spheres. In this context the resulted interactive poetry, as the medium of myth presentation, is not only concerned with the past but also with the quality of aesthetic production in the present and with the politics of mediation. In other words only an interactive poetry based on the use of multi-media spheres takes mythologies critically and then raises myth to consciousness. After all myth becomes experience and therefore history. In addition an interactive poetry must ensure a transmission from the source to the reader and vice-versa. Further, it arouses sensorial conscience in the body as much as in the mind, that is more than just emotional.

Above all interactive poetry, by transforming myth into history and experience, unveils the unity of the world and the actuality of authenticity; it changes the existing mode of cultural communication by making the reader poet and the poet reader; it breaks conventional ways of poetic expression.

To the extent this new concept of poetics radically unsettles the aesthetics and ideology of dominant myths; it goes against the fabrication of meaning and, finally, corresponds to the demand of modern poetics as an o m n i n a r r a t o r. When this happens, poetry seems to become not just a part of the totality of senses but an integrated medium of life, experience and history.

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