Pioneering works.
Hypertext poetry mediates a new interaction between readers and writers by letting readers permeate texts as they become active participants in shaping the direction of the language. Writers, in turn, develop strategies to give their audience exciting and engaging opportunities to navigate their work.
Some landmark works in hypertext poetry include:
"afternoon, a story" (1987) by Michael Joyce is often considered the first hypertext fiction, created with Storyspace. While technically fiction, its poetic language and non-linear structure influenced generations of hypertext poets.
"Patchwork Girl" (1995) by Shelley Jackson weaves together fragments of text that readers assemble, creating a quilt-like reading experience that changes with each navigation.
Radial poetry with SpicyNodes.
In the 2000s, the team behind WebExhibits created SpicyNodes, a radial mind-mapping tool that enabled a unique form of hypertext poetry. Poets experimented with the platform to create "node poems" where lines radiated outward from a central theme like branches from a trunk.
Writers including Marci Johnson, Tina Gagliardi, Scott Siders, Bob Yehling, and Joe Romano prototyped the form, creating works that let readers navigate through moods, emotions, and layered meanings. Johnson's "Choose" recontextualized phrases into different emotional contexts, while Gagliardi's "As Dawn Rises" experimented with radial writing where surrounding nodes could be read as a complete sentence or explored individually.
Though SpicyNodes is no longer actively developed (the platform used Flash, which was discontinued in 2020), its experiments with radial poetry influenced how we think about spatial relationships in digital verse.
Finding hypertext poetry today.
The Electronic Literature Collection, published by the Electronic Literature Organization, archives hundreds of works of electronic literature including hypertext poetry. Notable poetic works include Robert Kendall's "Faith," which uses animated text and reader choices to explore themes of belief and doubt.
Today's hypertext poets often use Twine, a free, open-source tool. Twine's visual editor lets poets see the branching structure of their work, making it intuitive to create complex, interconnected verses.