Apple II Quickie: bpNichol’s Apple II poems preserved

Over the years of 1983-84, Canadian poet Barrie Nichol (bpNichol) created “First Screening” a collection of twelve programmed works of poetry written in Applesoft BASIC. The poems have been described as ephemeral kinetic art, and are often cited as being among some of the earliest works of digital poetry. The collection has been preserved in it’s original form as disk images (suitable for emulators), as well as Hypercard and Javascript (links are on the preservation site).