Poetry as Code as Interactive Fiction: Engaging Multiple Text-Based Literacies in Scarlet Portrait Parlor

In Prismatik’s Scarlet Portrait Parlor (2020) poetry and code uncannily appear one and the same. This results in a work that is both familiar and strange, and this, along with Scarlet Portrait Parlor’s brevity, simplicity of construction, and immediate recognizability as a work of literature (a sonnet) that is also executable source code producing a work of electronic literature, has the potential to intrigue students and textual scholars unfamiliar with and perhaps resistant to Critical Code Studies (CCS). A study of Prismatik’s work also has the potential to refine some simplistic judgements in CCS scholarship about the efficacy of code that emulates natural, human language. This case study aims to elaborate the value of Scarlet Portrait Parlor as a rich example of how poetry, programming, and interactive fiction can be intertwined if not blurred in a single text and to act as a catalyst for generative discussions about the overlapping and intertwining of natural languages, programming languages, creative writing, and coding.