As part of our new summer US project States of Independence we've invited our favourite 30 American curators, magazines, creatives and institutions to takeover Dazed for a day.
Kenneth Goldsmith is taking over. The Museum of Modern Art's first Poet Laureate and founder of Ubuweb is on a mission to tell us why we should care about poetry at all – from his stirring call to arms (or QWERTY keyboards), to exclusive poetry designed to challenge your poetic preconceptions: Microsoft Word poems, found poems and Mira Gonzalez's diet poems.
The existential crises and non-spaces of the Beckettian world make it peculiarly amenable to the digital sphere – back in '97, he was possibly the first playwright to have the dubious honour of being performed in a chat room. NY-based poet Sophia Le Fraga has also sourced inspiration in Waiting For Godot, taking the rudiments of that play and relocating them to the smartphone sphere. In "W8ING", her signature textacular video format takes the unanswerable questions of Beckett and re-asks them in the elusive formats of everyday lyf: text speak, and emojis. Le Fraga, whose forthcoming book of poetry L O V E S O N G is coming soon, is currently working on a new video; M15ERY will aim to bring Stephen King's Misery into the social media register. We can't w8 – but for now, check out the poet's post-post-modern take on the Beckett universe, below.
