Once again, I, Dr Fulminare, have set a generation of plundering wild-head poets loose on the whole four-decade span of electronic gaming, compelling them to seek out mystery and meaning in a panoply of virtual realities. This time the scale is grander, the rewards richer, the effects dazzling in their variety. Mixing existing poems by well-known performers like Ross Sutherland and Nathan Penlington with newly commissioned work from a plethora of young writers, Coin Opera 2 uncovers the surprising similarities between the two mediums: the hidden rules and restrictions, the role of rhythm and structural repetition, the need to access that vital space between 'too hard' and 'too easy' which snares the human imagination, and, fundamentally, the importance of play. These are poems that don't just respond to the games that inspired them, but mould and reshape them, mimic and tinker with form and convention, fuse and confuse our world with theirs. Expect poems made entirely out of Playstation controller inputs, Lemmings as a metaphysical tale of transcendence, Caligula cynically gunning for a role in Final Fantasy IV, two-player head-to-head and collaborative poems, and mega-size boss poems. Everything, in fact, that I need to make my dreams of vengeance and world domination a reality. Continue?
