Andrew McEwan

Repeater Andrew McEwan

Poetry. REPEATER is a codebook. It is a poetic code programmed into a computer code.

Using the ASCII 8-bit binary code for each letter of the alphabet as an acrostic, the poems of REPEATER encode an investigation of layered and digitized language into the heart of the code itself. Appendixes form supplementary studies, and deviate into additional interactions in the convergence of poetry and computer programming.

Ultimately, REPEATER posits a program in which the creative variability of poetry is inputted into the rigid binaric structure of computer language.

"Louis Zukofsky famously located poetry as upper level music, lower level speech. Andrew McEwan's REPEATER moves between just those poles. The difference is that McEwan is tracking through the coded moments of a world of language where the lower level operates within the patterns of 'information interchange' that increasingly dominate what's left of the human and 'authenticity marks obsolescent outline / to transform the set.' Remarkably, McEwan still makes it sing amidst the 'unbound bits [that] float in gravity's delay.' REPEATER is a terrific debut book that promises much more to come."?Michael Boughn