Victoria Bennett and Adam Clarke form one of two teams we are supporting through the 2015 Writing Platform Bursary Programme, in association with Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. 

Victoria’s and Adam’s project uses Minecraft to immerse the player in the experience of a poem and expand the idea of what literature and video games can be.

The final work, titled My Mother’s House, is a poem-world built in Minecraft. Since starting this project Victoria has been caring for her mother who is in the last phase of her life and the subject and form of the poem reflect the process of letting go of someone you love. My Mother’s House demonstrates how writing and gaming can come together and help us explore and engage with aspects of life that are difficult to talk about in a way that is accessible and unintimidating.

If you have Minecraft installed, you can download the free playable map.

Watch the video walkthrough of My Mother’s House by Victoria Bennett and Adam Clarke

Watch Victoria and Adam’s final video diary on the making of My Mother’s House.

Adam and Victoria will be showcasing My Mother’s House, and discussing their creative collaboration, at the MIX: Writing Digital conference on 2nd July 2015. Full conference programme and booking information is available here.

Victoria Bennett and Adam Clarke form one of two teams we are supporting through the 2015 Writing Platform Bursary Programme, in association with Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. 

Victoria’s and Adam’s project uses Minecraft to immerse the player in the experience of a poem and expand the idea of what literature and video games can be. They are documenting the evolution of their project and their collaboration through a series of video diaries recorded in Minecraft.

In this second video diary Victoria and Adam – and their chicken, Ted Hughes – take take us through the latest developments in their Minecraft poetry project, including: using command blocks to display text in different ways, using redstone repeaters to create a visual experience of how a poem might be heard, and using frames to trigger audio. They also delve deeper into the idea of the labyrinth, both as an established poetic form and as a way of creating an environmental experience or a poem within Minecraft, and share their vision of how they might pull it all together in order create an adventure for readers, players and listeners.

You can watch Victoria’s and Adam’s first video diary here, and read about the other bursary project, created by Kelly Jones and Linda Sandvik, here and here.

Victoria Bennett and Adam Clarke form one of two teams we are supporting through the 2015 Writing Platform Bursary Programme, in association with Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. 

Victoria’s and Adam’s project uses Minecraft to immerse the player in the experience of a poem and expand the idea of what literature and video games can be. They are documenting the evolution of their project and their collaboration through a series of video diaries recorded in Minecraft.

In this first diary Adam and Victoria share their early ideas for the project – how they might go about building worlds from words, how players might experience and play with story in Minecraft, and draw interesting parallels between writing and building. As Victoria says:

“we started talking about how does that blank world relate to the blank page? As a writer, when I approach a blank page, I’m thinking, ‘what am I creating here?’ Each word that I place down is like a block, and this relates to how we create a world block by block within Minecraft”

We are also supporting Kelly Jones and Linda Sandvik through the bursary programme. Their project is inspired by Kelly’s parents meeting on illegal CB Radio and uses physical computing to explore the ideas of connection and intimacy, ephemerality and permanence. You can read their first diary post here.