The PuntuEUS Foundation publishes the first anthology of poetry of code in Basque

The PuntuEus Foundation has published the first anthology of code poetry in Basque. The digital book gathers the contributions received through the laboratory of code poetry between the years 2019-2020. From 30 November you can read, consult and download for free at www.kodepoesia.eus. In total it includes the contributions of ten authors. The anthology is composed of poems written in Phyton, Java, Bash scripting or HTML.

 

First laboratory of code poetry and anthology in Basque language

Code poetry is a type of poetry written using programming languages. The PuntuEus Foundation launched in September 2019 the first laboratory of code poetry in Basque through the web www.kodepoesia.eus. It is a project that aims to promote digital literary creation in Basque, so the laboratory of poetry of code is a space open to experimentation.

In the laboratory of poetry of code literature merges with the digital world. With the aim of promoting participation, the PuntuEus Foundation offered in autumn courses in Bilbao, Vitoria-Gasteiz and Donostia-San Sebastián of code poetry taught by writer and computer Bertol Arrieta.

 

What is poetry in code?

Source code poetry is a type of poetry that is written using programming languages. The main objective is to compose a poem with the written code in the chosen programming language. Although the main aim of programming is to develop a functional product (a mobile app, a website, etc.), this is not (as) important in the case of source code poetry. The text created, apart from being a poem, may be a program that works, but this is not indispensable. The sole limitation to the poetry is the syntax of the programming language chosen, since each has its own peculiarities: formatting rules, words with specific functions, etc.

Poems are composed with all these ingredients, which can deal with any subject, as in any other poetry genre. Since the key words that programming languages use are normally English loans, poems in written code to date have generally been written in English. However, they may be written in any language, including Euskera. This is precisely the objective of the laboratory in source code poetry: to promote creativity in the digital environment.