Dual Wield: The Interplay of Poetry and Video Games

by Jon Stone

In recent years, poetry and video games have begun talking to - and taking from - one another in earnest. Poets, ever in pursuit of meaning, now draw inspiration from digital-interactive fantasy worlds, while video game developers aim to enrich their creations by imbuing them with poetic depth. This book investigates the phenomena of poem-game hybrids and other forms of poetic-ludic interplay, making use of both a multidisciplinary critical approach and the author's own experiments in building and testing hybrid artefacts. What emerges is the suggestion of a future where reading and playing are no longer seen as separate endeavours, where the quests for sensory pleasure and philosophic insight are one and the same.

171 pages, Hardcover

Published March 7, 2022

About the author

Jon is a Derbyshire-born writer, editor and researcher who specialises in amalgams: hybrids, mixtures, collections and crossovers, of poem and game, fantasy and realism, curation and composition.

Many of the books he publishes are multi-author anthologies, co-conceived and edited with Kirsten Irving, designed to bridge the gap between poetry and other genres, including writing on games and film, nature guides, activity books and comics.

He won an Eric Gregory Award in 2012, the Poetry London prize in 2014 and 2016 and the Live Canon International Poetry Prize in 2018. His research on poem-game hybrids was published as a monograph, 'Dual Wield: The Interplay of Poetry and Videogames', in 2022.