Biographical Poetry in Print and Programmable Media
Psychometric Researches, commissioned as part of Red Room Poetry’s Poetry Object project, was written as a response to an 1863 copy of William and Elizabeth Denton’s Nature’s Secrets or Psychometric Researches.
The Durham Poems are a collection of poems concerning William Denton’s childhood and youth, specifically the years 1823 to 1842, in the county of Durham, UK. William Denton was born in Darlington and spent his early working life in Darlington and Shildon, working a number of jobs and apprenticeships, first as a currier when he was eleven and from the age of fourteen as a machinist in Timothy Hackworth’s workshop.
It was also during this period that Denton proselytised on a range of topics including temperance and religion. He kept drafts of these speeches in his early journals along with …
The Soul of Letters is a series of poems that will be eventually realised as a full-length print manuscript. The poems follow no specific format other than complying with the print conventions and restrictions of literary journals: page and text size.
William-Denton appears in the headers of The Code of Things. In response to each page request a line from one of William Denton’s poems are returned.
Denton’s Game of Life is a representation of William Denton through an algorithmic process. Using Conway’s Game of Life as a model a letter from “Denton’s Game” appears randomly in each cell to create words.
Denton believed that the world was alive and that life would spontaneously generate, even in sealed containers.
A series of poems concerning William Denton, Elizabeth Foote Denton, Annie Denton Cridge, Sherman Denton and the inhabitants, plants and animals of Jupiter. Each Jovian sonnet uses the same template—a representation of Jupiter—to structure the poem.
‘We Were from Yankee-land, No Mistake’, 1882 is a print response, and complementary to, They Have Large Eyes and Can See In All Directions. The poem uses the same sources to interpret the events in print media.
They Have Large Eyes and Can See In All Directions is a reinterpretation of texts mixed with extracts from books on psychometry written by William Denton and diaries written by his sons concerning their experiences in Melbourne in August 1882.
Sherman and Shelley went collecting skins in Panton Hill and Pheasant Creek while William remained in the city to speak at Spiritualist meetings.