Poetry Meets the Metaverse in Kerrie Joy’s Anythink World Debut

Kerrie Joy doesn’t play video games. She’s not fluent in game engines or metaverse lingo, and she jokes that anything past turning on digital devices can be a challenge. So, when the Adams County Poet Laureate was asked to co-create an immersive poetry experience within a custom-built virtual world, she jumped in out of curiosity rather than comfort.

"I’m very, very new to all of this, and I'm definitely not a gamer," she admits. "But I’m always open to seeing how my work can exist on different planes.”

Now, her work has found a powerful new medium in Unwritten, a virtual poetry journey that debuted on July 15 as part of Anythink World, the award-winning library system’s expansive digital platform. Unwritten, which is free to explore on a desktop, tablet, or mobile device, provides a window into Joy's life and artistry while also inviting users to reflect on their own.

"It started off with this idea of what home looked like for me because the world itself is different versions of what my home has looked like," Joy says. "The poem in the experience itself kind of touches on how it has been challenging over time, being in the body that I'm in, and just being presented with the challenges of the many isms of the world. It wasn't always easy. I'm a child of Jamaican immigrants, and there were a lot of things that I presented to my family that they were like, ‘I don't know if I'm down with that,' so a big theme of the piece is trying to figure out how to be at home within myself."

At its core, Unwritten is a digital memoir rendered in poetry and pixels. Visitors start on a stylized train car that transports them into versions of Joy’s past: her childhood bedroom, a local church, a stage, and a quiet lakeside grove. Each space is designed with meticulous detail — Barney bedsheets, Curious George posters and World Book encyclopedias — offering a glimpse into her formative years.

“The Unwritten experience is like stepping into my mind and walking through my creative processes,” Joy says. “It’s an invitation to slow down, reflect and transform the user’s experiences into poetry. My hope is that everyone who visits ‘my world’ walks away feeling seen, inspired and empowered to write their truth.”

As users navigate this digital dreamscape, they interact with a virtual version of Joy, who poses reflective prompts that encourage people to consider their relationship to home. Nods to Joy's Jamaican heritage, early inspirations, and personal milestones can be found all over the world, encouraging exploration and deepening the emotional resonance of the experience.
"These elements are designed to help people tell their story," Joy says. "I say a lot throughout the experience that I'm inviting people to write their story. Sometimes we get mental blocks, so I'm hoping to show people what the things are that I tap into when I'm trying to tell my story."

The experience is a cornerstone of Anythink World, a sprawling virtual platform built with Unreal Engine. “Anythink World is our custom metaverse of spaces,” Anythink World Branch Manager Alex Thao says. “However, some people aren't sure what that represents, so the way I pitch Anythink World to most people is that it's a multitude of spaces online that we can connect, run programs and have meetings, which usually kind of helps build the foundation for understanding."

The concept for Anythink World was born in the wake of the pandemic, when in-person access to library services became limited and the need for digital community-building grew urgent. The first phase of the platform, known as The Island, debuted in early 2023 as an outdoor, mountainous, open world space. Since then, the platform has evolved into a robust metaverse ecosystem, adding The Campus, designed for interactive programs and meetings, and now, Unwritten.

Thao, who came on board in late 2023, has been instrumental in shaping this second wave of development.

“Part of Anythink World's goal was to meet people where they are,” Thao says. “We understand a lot of our customers are maybe not coming into the library, but they're still using our e-resources like ebooks, audio, audiobooks, things like that, so this is a way to meet those people. We love connecting people to other people, especially in their own communities, and then we love connecting experts and providing free programming to our community, and being able to offer that online just increases the entry point for customers.”
For Unwritten, Thao collaborated with Joy over several months, coding interactions, designing the layout in Unreal Engine and working with third-party developers to reconstruct Brighton’s Main Street, complete with railroad tracks, storefronts and a church. All of it is streamed through Eagle 3D’s cloud-based platform, allowing even tech novices to jump in with just a click. While Joy was new to the virtual space, she was deeply involved in shaping its contours.

“What I enjoyed about this experience was that Alex allowed me to be a part of every single step of the process,” Joy says. “They gave me the four walls of each space that we enter, so I could dictate what everything looks like. Every single wall was a part of my imagination, and they would obviously tell me what could work and what couldn't, and I had to work within those boundaries, but it was a really cool experience.”

Behind the scenes, the creative vision came with real technical hurdles. Because Unwritten uses a newer version of Unreal Engine than other parts of Anythink World, Thao had to navigate compatibility issues and server delays while ensuring the storytelling elements ran smoothly.

To make the experience more accessible, Thao implemented a technology called Pixel Streaming, which allows users to stream Unwritten directly from the cloud without downloading any software. And for those still hesitant about entering a digital space, Anythink is also offering alternative ways to engage, like a companion webpage that walks users through the experience in a more traditional, text-based format.

“We know not everyone’s going to be comfortable navigating a virtual world,” Thao says. “AnyThink believes that everyone is creative and capable of doing something like this, and it might be a fun way to challenge yourself if you're not used to exploring a digital piece like this. But, if people are like, ‘It's not going to be possible for me to figure out how to move around,’ they can kind of walk through it in a written format that they're more comfortable with."
With Unwritten now live, Joy hopes the experience can live on as-is, giving people the time and space to fully immerse themselves in it.

“I mean, I would love to see it just exist for a bit, right, as it is right now,” she says. “Obviously, there is a connection to Anythink World on a larger level, but this particular experience, I want to see what it does for people as it stands for at least the next year or so.”

After that? She’s open to evolving it, especially as new ideas begin to take shape.

“If Anythink is open to it or if I connect with other developers, over time, maybe we might be able to create something that takes this to a whole other level,” Joy says. “Because even as we completed the project, I started to get more ideas about how I could have done it differently, and what I might want to do next time. I would love to see more of this happening and I would love to be a part of it, but I'm also just excited for people to exist in the world as it is."

As the experience continues to roll out, Joy isn't the only one curious to see how people interact with Unwritten. For Thao, who built the world from the code up, the most exciting part is the opportunity for personal reflection that the experience unlocks.

“I'm mostly looking forward to people being able to explore what their version of home is,” Thao says. “The narrative is the driving force of this experience. Of course, you can go and experience the virtual world and do all that, but I think it's the storytelling and it's the contemplation and the ability to listen to Kerrie’s prompts, apply them to yourself and, hopefully, write a poem for yourself. How often is it that we get to take a step back from our physical lives and contemplate writing a poem or contemplate what home is?”

Explore Unwritten at anythinklibraries.org/world.