What a switch-up from last week! I had such a fun time going through this interactive poem. I appreciated the intro page that told us what to do and how to explore while still giving us the freedom to click around in any order. I will admit the first time I played around with this it was late and I was tired and wasn’t fully grasping the idea. When I took another swing at it the next day, I think it kind of clicked for me. I will say one thing was that I felt rushed reading some of the poems because they often disappeared by my second read through. I was getting kind of frustrated because I couldn’t absorb the poems right away before the faded. Which led me to thinking it was part of the experience. Migrating is an incredible feat with many challenges including language. I am unsure if this was intentional but I felt like perhaps the fading of the poems after a short duration of time with them felt symbolic at one point. I actually loved that I didn’t know what to expect when clicking around. Was I getting a poem? A video? A piece of audio? A poem with images?

One thing I really enjoyed about this was the immersive experience. In this piece, we have poetry, music/audio, and artwork. The colors in the artwork and the style were soothing and beautiful. I started out with Pacific Rim and when I first got to that page, I was brought to a video of various images with phrases like “Made in Japan” “Made in Hong Kong” “Made in Thailand” etc. and the ending was a photo of what appears to be business men at a meeting. As I clicked around this page, it brought me poems about Chinese-Canadian migration and language barriers. When I looked at the list of locations, I see that Pacific Rim is not near the top so I’m not sure if I was supposed to start there but I did. After I realized there was a menu, I went in order down the list. I loved the imagery of the body that the creator used but was surprised that it didn’t continue throughout

Second location was “Canada” which was an arm. I thought we would moving through various parts of the body until I got to “Victoria”. Out of the three sections, I started with, Victoria was my favorite. I loved the audio features of this page. The fragments of audio on this page were helpful in making connections for me. I appreciated the insight of chinatown and what it currently represents in contrast to its past. The “Nelson” section’s music was unsettling to me. The one poem about the cemetery made me feel sad but it also sort of conveyed the experience of migration and feeling misplaced.

Overall, I had a more enjoyable experience navigating this than Twelve Blue but I still am feeling unsure of my understanding of the piece. There were moments I felt like I understood and then moments where I was a little lost. Maybe that was the point though.