I’ve become involved with a digital art festival, and they want me to do poetry (lol…)
I’m aware of the piece on Sub-Q, but other than that I’m sadly ignorant (novelist rather than poet, whether interactive or not).
So…what should I be reading before I dive in? Nothing too graphic please 
It doesn’t have to be free, but under $5 is nice.
I think that some of zarf’s past works such as The Space Under The Window or My Secret Hideout would apply…
I’m sure Nick Montfort could give you a stack of recommendations three feet high.
Arid and Pale by Michael Bacon is an example of a way to write Interactive Poetry in Inform… though I guess he says it’s not meant to be appreciated as poetry. Pale Blue Light by Kazuki Mishima (Dominic Delabruere) has sections of interactive poetry in that style interspersed with more traditional parser gameplay.
Desiring Flights by Barry Moon and Chris Danowski is a kind of interactive poetry that isn’t interactive fiction as we understand it, and while I’m mentioning stuff from Emily Short’s post about interactive poetry at the IF Demo Fair I’ll mention my own The Table though it’s not very good.
Looking at that post reminds me that you might want to check out the Electronic Literature Collection.
Harry Giles’s Ghost Highland Way is an interactive Twine poem, in the Scots language.
There’s also this hypertext piece that I’ve seen on the web, like from the old days of hypertext, that you might not want because it’s about the author’s memories of her romantic and erotic experiences though I don’t remember how graphic it is–ugh, I can’t remember what it is and it’s driving me up the wall. Anyone have any idea? I think it might have a number in its title, like Love-Memory One or something like that?
(All this said, I’d start with Carolyn’s suggestion of Renga in Four Parts.)
sub-Q actually has a few interactive poetry things. What Fuwa Bansaku Found is written with a semi-poetic structure, but Christmas Greetings, New Year’s Day, and A Man in His Life are all traditional poems that’ve had interactive elements added to them. I’d say that A Man in His Life is the most successful adaptation of these three.
There’s also The War of the Willows from IFComp. I know it got last place, but I think a lot of that was due to the awkward Python format. It has good writing.
Danse Nocturne is another good one!
I remembered the hypertext thing I was thinking of; it’s l0ve0ne by Judy Malloy. (I was much closer to the name than I thought!) Looking around a little it doesn’t seem that graphic… but I didn’t read every passage.
There’s the IFDB tag for poetry.
I particularly like You Are Not The Author, which despite the name is a tool for creating poems.