Secrecy, Surveillance and Poetic “Data-bodies”

Abstract

This article explores themes of secrecy and monitoring in three works of experimental poetry published since the millennium: Redell Olsen's Secure Portable Space (2004), Who Not to Speak To by Marianne Morris, and Zoe Skoulding’s The Museum of Disappearing Sounds (2013). My analysis draws on Zygmunt Bauman and David Lyon’s discussion of secrecy in Liquid Surveillance, along with theories of “data doubles" and “everyday” ubiquity of surveillance technologies, to show how these poets use innovative lyric forms to negotiate contemporary expectations of “public” and “private” communicative spaces.