Collaborative research creation
PhoneMe
A place-based digital poetry platform where poems are written, spoken, and left at the places they are about, so a map becomes a way of reading.
Open PhoneMe →Statement
PhoneMe brings together networked and place-based poetry, spoken word, digital mapping, and participatory media. Since 2016 it has been used in classrooms, community workshops, and research as a living pedagogy of land, language, and digital poetics. It is also where my work with interactive creative systems began, well before the current wave of generative AI.
A poem on the map
Home · Halfmoon Bayin language i become unlocate able monoinfinite english devouring homes: l’habitation, xwilkway, Halfmoon Bay, heimat, בית, algo- rithmic return, dis articulated by the tonguing sunshine yet always always become ing in the ways I cannot s(t)ay home
Publications
- 2026Horst, R., James, K., & Takeda, Y. Where place meets platform: The PhoneMe Project as a living pedagogy of land, language, and digital poetics. In Routledge Handbook on Place-Based Approaches in Language and Culture Studies. Routledge.
- 2023Ahn, C., Balyasnikova, N., Horst, R., James, K., Morales, E., Takeda, Y., & Yung, E. Enhancing relationality through poetic engagement with PhoneMe: Transmodal contexts and interpretive agency. Language and Literacy, 23(2), 57–83.
- 2022Horst, R., James, K., Morales, E., & Takeda, Y. The intermingled meanings of PhoneMe: Exploring transmodal, place-based poetry in an online social network. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 66(4), 249–256.
- 2020Arts-based teaching and learning forum. Workshop facilitator with UBC’s Learning Exchange: poetry writing, performance and publication on PhoneMe.