Approximately one geologic age ago (2014-2015), I published this little chapbook of computational poetry called picking figs in the ˚̥̞̞̽̽ͯ garden while my world eats Itself.
I described the book at the time;
picking figs in the ˚̥̞̞̽̽ͯ garden while my world eats Itself is a curatorial poetry collaboration with a large number of algorithms, bots, generators, and code snippets. Using a shifting set of parameters to define possible poem shapes in a letter-as-atomic-particle ruleset, these programs dissect and reassemble language according to a set of meanings intrinsic to their existence.
In the passing ... decade ..... my work has really moved away from this kind of computational language practice, in no small part because of what it is to be working in a field now defined by large language models. Got tired of explaining what it is to construct small datasets with care, contributor consent, and curatorial vision, and that algorithms can be handwritten by someone who understands the borders and breakages of language as a poet, not as a enterprise solution. Instead, the computational work of mine that could still be called poetry tends to deal less with data and more with living networks, html elements, links, information in-situ.
Still, when Allison Parrish reached out about including a poem in the Center for Book Arts' Spring 2023 Broadside Series, which pairs a poet and a designer together to produce an edition of 100 prints, I felt like I couldn't pass up the opportunity. The prints are just beautiful. And while I did consider sending segments of newer work (from Sungrazer, or Soft Corruptor, maybe) the format felt like it really asked for a .... poem.
So, I sent a few from picking figs. The designer on the project- Caslon Yoon- selected this one. On carbonless copy paper, printed with letterpress and risograph. In our discussions, we talked about the affect of using "outdated" technologies of production (copy caper, risograph, markov chains, deletion poems, grammars) in the face of the new (offset printing, GPT) and what that means to us both. I really couldn't be happier with how it turned out.
As a launch event, I read some poems with the other poets in the broadside series (and talked a bit more about making that work so long ago). The recording lives at https://youtube.com/watch?v=40CSMt4P5rA, which may be the only recording... of me reading poetry... ever. I read at 52:38, but the whole thing is worth a watch- especially Allison's intro, she is as eloquent about the position of technologies in culture as ever.
And the broadsides are here;
https://centerforbookarts.org/book-shop?cat=broadside
