They Speak to Me

What They Speak When They Speak To Me
(Best experienced on the iPad)

What They Speak When They Speak To Me is an interactive poem about mistaken identity and the confusion-amusing and alarming-that happens when people believe you are somebody you are not.

At the beginning, the reader sees a mass of slowly floating letters. When the reader mouse-downs on a letter, the letter illuminates. Other letters also illuminate, and as the reader moves the letter under the mouse around, those letters begin detaching themselves from their location and forming up in a line behind the first letter. As the reader moves the mouse around the screen she can read more and more, as the letters form into words and sentences until an entire line of the poem is legible. When the reader releases the mouse all the letters de-associate themselves again and fade into the alphabet soup of the background.

The interaction is designed to echo the text’s concern with the difficulty in establishing lines of communication when in a foreign place, and the necessity for intense concentration such efforts require.