At last, e-poets could establish itself as a community of writers where encounter mattered and it, not the technology, was the focus of our work. This imposed some structure on our relationships which, after the relative chaos of Telepoetics, was comforting for some. But it also meant our videophone audience was narrow, namely only those artists and audiences lucky enough to assemble for a live connection. Don't misunderstand this point. Good things happened in these situations, such as dialog and interactions between cultures which, I found, lended meaning, context, and a sense of discovery to the work.
People do react to the poetry in real time, and the performing poet hears that.
People can be nonverbal with each other, too, since this is live video. These experiences denote and connote culture. Since I built out the technology for the audience in a theater, the public didn't need anything more than the time and interest to come and participate in this. We were able to answer accessibility issues, but only as long as one could get to the theater where we worked. While our topology was sufficient, it was arguably incomplete.