An Undecided Fate

Evie Godfrey2023 Longlist, 2023 Shortlist - Student, Opening Up

The work begins on the title page, and the reader enters through the flashing red map pin. The title and my name are interactive and interchangeable through a cycling link. From there, you click on the hyperlinked, highlighted words or phrases that link you to the next node. Depending on the reader’s choices and decisions, they will end up on the poems in the two themes of Heaven or Hell. The main poems have hyperlinked lines that either cycle or replace each line with a new one. This technique creates epoetry that is three dimensional, meaning it can be read through clicking through each line to create its own stanza or by changing lines to create a new poem with each click. “An Undecided Fate” spans my feelings and poetic work while I was severely depressed and suicidal, and it also consists of my reconciliation with this time in my life and the change in my understanding of life itself. This is all filtered and imagined through my relationship with God, as the work features two opposing and overlapping themes of Heaven and Hell. My digital literature professor, Deena Larsen, is hosting this work for me, as I am not familiar with the technological means to host it myself. I have also included many hidden elements and dead-end nodes that include smaller poems that are less interactive and simpler. This work is also one big loop, so the reader can begin the work again at the title page and create a new reading and understanding of each poem every time.