Eileen R. Tabios


Cloudygenous Ars Poetica

For Counter-Desecration: A Glossary for Writing Within the Anthropocene edited by Linda Russo and Marthe Reed (Wesleyan University Press, 2018), I created a word: “cloudygenous.” As I state in Counter-Desecration:

“I thought of cloudygenous for reflecting the contemporary integration of internet access into daily living, a practice more likely to deepen and expand in the future. Indigeneity historically is tied to the land. As human population continues to rise and becomes more dense in places, access to land may become less common, even as the internet’s reach expands. Those already born and likely to be born into such an environment are likely to create a new type of culture.”

Cloudygenous describes the results of lifestyles and practices resulting from living in the internet so that internet becomes the “place” generating its own indigenous peoples and/or practices. This could be positive, e.g. when the internet facilitates engagement with the universe beyond one’s physical borders. This could be negative, e.g. when the e-magination of the cloudygenous replaces physical reality and engagement with such reality. It’s not an adjective that’s inherently negative or positive; it’s more complicated, in the way a cloud can obscure but also generate life-supporting rain.

Cloudygenous Ars Poetica [1]

Cloudygenous Ars Poetica [2]




Eileen R. Tabios loves books and has released over 50 collections of poetry, fiction, essays, and experimental biographies from publishers in nine countries and cyberspace. She invented the poetry form “hay(na)ku” whose 15-year anniversary in 2018 was recently celebrated in the U.S. at the San Francisco and Saint Helena Public Libraries. More information is available at https://eileenrtabios.com
 
 
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