This anthology features collaboratively created poems by 84 contributors of all experiences and geographies - from state poets laureates to casual journalers; from Pennsylvania to Georgia to South Korea, India and South Africa.
In 2012, inspired by the early 20th century French surrealist parlor game, Exquisite Corpse, M Ayodele Heath began hosting collaborative poetry-making sessions, or digital salons, on his Facebook page. To date, more than 150 poets participated in these virtual events. Heath chose the very best 50 poems, out of hundreds, to carefully catalogue, assemble and preserve.
The anthology has three sections: collaborative poems, poems from the most frequent contributors and a step-by-step guide for the reader. What sounds like a very straight-forward book of poetry is a complex, unique and layered book. In the same way the visual surface of an electronic device is straight forward and intuitive, the back end of that device contains layer upon layer of parts and programming. Heath, uses the structure of the anthology to encourage the reader to discover poems and poetry writing in new ways.
The contributors (representing over 20 U.S. states and 4 countries) in Electronic Corpse: Poems From A Digital Salon are deeply symbolic. Crafted by poets of all colors, nationalities, genders, and classes, they are simply poems. Poems made by people who entered into a playful language exercise with no expected outcome or pre-conceived agenda. They are an example of what *we* can create together.
"In an online open mic there will still be a segment of people who really only want to socialize in the margins, or poets who will argue for just the right moment of stage time. What makes the poems that appear in this collection rise above ego tradition is that the end result comes seemingly out of a hive mind; most of the poems don't sound like five, six or seven authors, but one." -Scott Woods
"There's a whimsy and generosity inherent in the reader's interactions with these works.The poems belong to the group.And so the poems are not about perfection, but the wild observations, whit, and elation these poems contain.ReadingElectronic Corpseis like watching a game of spades spun into verse." -Yona Harvey
"Carefully curated by M. Ayodele Heath, the anthology, Electronic Corpse: Poems from a Digital Salon, and the process that sparked it challenge both notions. Disparate, ringing voices join under single prompts from other voices to create new and thriving, evocative poems; sometimes as one speaker, sometimes a chorus, each poem a discovery, a celebration of community, the glory and vital need for poets to bear witness to language and our world." -Georgia A. Popoff
"Ultimately, the world is saturated by the perfected poem. Rarely, do we allow audiences to slip inside our sacred inner sanctum. If they did, they might witness us hard at play, luxuriating in the joy of language. They might catch us being precisely present in the craft. They might glimpse a perfect poem. This book is your invitation to our games." - Christina Springer

M. Ayodele Heath is a poet so fierce, so tender, so (rightly) angry, so generous of heart and spirit that I am 1) grateful, and 2) reminded again and again why I love poetry, why I have reason to love poetry: because it can be like this - Thomas Lux, author of God Particles In this electrifying first collection of poems, Ayodele Heath explores "otherness" -- Black otherness, Southern otherness, African otherness, his otherness which becomes our otherness and everyone's otherness -- with such heat and such heart and such precision and magic that the words fairly fly off the page. This is language swooning and falling in love with itself; "consonants sharp as fangs and clean/ as bone." Here are poems "burning the pages in my eyes;" poems that are sharp, hip, sassy and smart as whips, taut as drums; poems full of beauty and horror and passion, unpredictable at every turn. This is the kind of poetry that keeps poetry alive. - Cecilia Woloch, author of Carpathia The words of M. Ayodele Heath are 'a foam which knows no foreign shore.' With his latest collection, Otherness, Heath bathes us in pools flooded with humankind's purest mind. A golden tongued man teaching the tone deaf to dance, his beat filled heart pulsing arrhythmic codes to the misbegotten, one eye witnesses the gore and the other praises glory. Open this book and allow this high priest of prosody to reveal the secrets of okra seeds germinating beneath the djembe's skin. - Robert Earl Price poet/ playwright M. Ayodele Heath's Otherness is many-voiced, peopled with a rich and real throng of speakers clamoring to have their say. Heath seems part stage director, part mimic, part ventriloquist as he channels and divines and ultimately bears witness to this subject of "otherness," the history and repercussions of race in America and abroad. His ear is outrageously good, his music rangy, unswerving, and often dizzyingly ambitious. This is a remarkable first collection. - Paula McLain, author of Less of Her, Stumble, Gorgeous and The Paris Wife