A Call for Submissions on Forensic Visual Poetry
What is Forensic Poetry?
Forensic Poetry investigates the mechanisms that produce verse and image in an age of computational circulation. It treats the page as an archaeological site, the algorithm as material evidence, and manual labor as critical methodology.
Where digital systems compress, abstract, and render invisible their processes of extraction, forensic poetry makes those operations visible through deliberate material investigation. It asks: What gets lost in translation from flesh to pixel to pattern? What labor disappears into “automatic” generation? How do photographs become gradient ghosts in training datasets?
This is poetry that refuses to accept the smooth surface of the rendered image. It reverse-engineers. It simulates computational processes manually—through medium, halftone screening, four-color separation—to reveal the decisions embedded in every act of processing. It positions the hand not as nostalgic retreat but as forensic instrument.
Forensic Poetry examines how images, texts, and bodies circulate through technological infrastructure, how they’re transformed in that circulation, and what testimony remains in the residue. It’s concerned with the material conditions of digital production: the invisible contributors to training datasets, the content moderators, the compression artifacts that carry contemporary and historical images forward into algorithmic futurity.
THE VERSE ENGINE seeks work that:
   •    Investigates image-making systems through material process
   •    Makes computational operations visible through manual simulation
   •    Engages with the circulation and transformation of visual/textual material
   •    Questions authenticity, authorship, and attribution in technological reproduction
   •    Treats typography, layout, and visual structure as evidentiary
   •    Reveals the labor concealed in “automated” systems
   •    Works at the intersection of historical materials and contemporary processing
We’re interested in visual poetry that operates as forensic analysis—work that doesn’t just use digital tools but investigates them, that doesn’t just circulate images but examines their circulation, that treats every rendering as an opportunity for material testimony.
Submission Guidelines:
Submit exactly 2 works of visual poetry (.jpg or .png format only)Maximum file size: 5MB per file Include: brief artist statement (50 words max), work titles, dimensions if physical work Email submissions to: info@reservoirblog.org
Works will be presented in gallery format with artist bio. You may also include a link to your website or SM platform.
Deadline: January 26, 2026
Questions about appropriateness? If your work asks how images are made, circulated, compressed, extracted, or transformed—if it investigates rather than merely employs—it belongs here.

Sedserio.com is committed to examining the material conditions of contemporary poetics. The Verse Engine is edited by Laura Kerr, whose forensic poetics practice investigates computational systems through manual simulation.

Leaf Margins by Laura Kerr