Snow Poem in July

Interactive concrete poetry exploring elemental transformations through CSS animations and HTML5 interactions

Created Apr 17, 2024 - Last updated: Apr 17, 2024

Blooming 🌸

❄️🔥💧 Try the Interactive Poetry

🎨 Embedded Demo

📜 About the Piece

Created during “Let’s Play: Wayward Sentences” with Kameelah Janan Rasheed and Shiraz Abdullahi Gallab at School for Poetic Computation.

This interactive concrete poem transforms a single five-line verse about elemental memory through three distinct visual and kinetic interpretations:

The Poem:

Snow falls silently on scorched earth
A pale shroud over ashes, hiding wounds
Crimson stains peek through the icy veil
Whispers of oceans past, quietly subdued
In these shadows, memories bleed anew

💻 Technical Constraints

Built using minimal inline CSS and non-traditional HTML tags:

<details>/<summary> - HTML5 collapsible elements for interaction
<marquee> - Deprecated but poetic scrolling text element
CSS @keyframes - Custom animations for flicker and pulse effects
transform: rotate() - Circular text positioning using mathematical rotation
Pure CSS - No JavaScript, only declarative styling and animation

🏫 SFPC Context

Created as a 12-minute in-class exercise exploring playful approaches to serious subjects. The constraint-based methodology reflects SFPC’s emphasis on computational poetry where technical limitations become creative opportunities.

The circular text arrangement evokes both:

Cyclical time - Seasons, memory, renewal
Ritual space - Sacred geometry in digital form
Elemental cycles - Water to ice to vapor to rain

“In these shadows, memories bleed anew” - transformation through digital iteration