Onchain poetry is alive and kicking. There's a warm, creative and active community of poets who have made Web3 their playground. Maybe they have been hidden from sight for you, mostly, but some of us have made headlines. Poets like Sasha Stiles and Ana Maria Caballero are making waves all over the world. And with them, many of us are creating beautiful pieces, as you can see in our bi-weekly digest.
To celebrate the poets who create onchain, we are, together witth the Crypotpoetry community, celebrating a Poet of the Month. This is the first time we publish the interview we did with our Poet of the Month here, in the Onchain Poetry Digest.
This month, October 2023, our Poet of the Month is... gomp_art.
OCPD: Let's start with the basics: who are you?
Gomp: " I'm an artist and educator in Cape Cod (Massachusetts, USA) who crafts NFTs from my poetry and photography. I've been doing it seriously now for about a year and a half, love the incredible creativity and support found in the NFT community and thoroughly enjoy being able to share my art.
Gomp comes from Gomphotherium, an extinct genus of elephant that I read about right when I was starting my deep dive into art on the blockchain. I share my stuff under the moniker gomp_art."
Well, nice to meet, you, gomp_aert. We will put an elephant in the header image, I hope it will turn out to be one looking like a Gomphotherium.
We believe poetry can be many things. There is no universal truth, when it comes to defining poetry. It's up to us. So, according to you, what is poetry?
I don't know if I can define it. Words that solicit emotion? Crafted language play? Phrases of sentimental bloodletting? Episodes of catharsis?
I thought of this the other day:
"Graffiti of the heart upon the edifice of the mind."
Poetry is something like that.
That's a great answer. We are going to quote you on that. Now, can you tell us about your path into the wonderful world of Web3 and creating poetry onchain? What's your rabbit hole route?
I grew up writing poetry in journals, often noting great phrases from whatever I was reading at the time. I have since lived my life full of verse and songwriting.
But I also love photography, which was my gateway into NFTs. What began as little poems in the descriptions of my photographs, has morphed into full blown poetry pieces, a new connection with the poetry community, and my very first poetry sales.
After a great deal of work, a plethora of mistakes and a lot of experimentation, I feel like I'm finally finding my artistic groove as a cryptopoet.
"One of my favorite pieces of gomp_art is I See You. It holds such a beautiful message, and finds beauty in the ordinary."
- Arjan Tupan
Finding your artistic groove. Cool. If there are poets out there who have not joined us onchain, what would you say to a poet who wants to enter this world?
Jump in. We need your voice.
But, know that it is a difficult market and creators everywhere are struggling. It takes time to make connections, to build name recognition, to get your poetry in front of those who might be interested.
I'm personally focusing on improving my craft, thoughtfully expanding my presence, and supporting the community.
Speaking of other poets: can you share five poetry NFTs people should know about?
OddWritings is the reason I am writing word-unit palindrome poems. Genius! See Murder by (Loco)motive.
I've been enjoying Timothy's Haikus.
I love Marta's use of multiple languages in her pieces. See huggin' You.
It makes me happy that Doodleslice just plays in this poem.
Leon was a previous Cryptopoet of the Month, and this one is impressive.
To close off, where are you minting and why?
At the moment, I'm only minting on Objkt. The process is quick, easy, cheap and accessible. And, there is a great community of talented artists there.
If you want to connect with gomp_art, or check out his work, you can find him on Objkt, Directory.art, BlueSky, X (nee Twitter) and Linktree.
