Ideas Exchange 2023/2024

What will the project involve? 

This project is led by Lyra - Bristol Poetry Festival in collaboration with public poets and University of Bristol academics. Page Against the Machine will bring together three poets to research, explore and create poetry in collaboration with AI. Poets, academics, technological experts and members of the public will share thoughts, ideas and concerns to inspire subsequent research questions. The project will involve research and development sessions where creatives will have paid time to collaborate with AI and creative technology experts. The project explores new processes which develop their own practice and have a wider impact in the way we think about the future of poetry and creativity, using this as a lens to consider wider philosophical, artistic and ethical questions, such as intellectual property, or the limits of ‘collaboration’ between human and AI.

The project will involve three poets, including former Bristol City Poet Caleb Parkin (also the project’s creative consultant and poet liaison), Bristol-based poet and researcher Shakara and UK Poetry Slam Champion Deanna Rodger, creative technology experts, Lyra’s Co-Director Danny Pandolfi as project lead, and University academic Dr Rebecca Kosick (Comparative Poetry and Poetics). Genevieve Liveley (Professor of Classics and Director of the Research Institute for Sociotechnical Cyber Security) will also assist in an advisory and feedback capacity. The research will be co-produced, with poets and researchers working together at every step of the process to generate insights through practice-based collaboration.

Throughout the project we aim to attract new partners across the creative technology sector and the wider creative community to engage in conversations, attend our live panel, and co-curate research questions alongside the artists and audiences. The process of curating these activities will involve discussions with academics across disciplines, such as Michael Marcinkowski (Senior Lecturer in Digital Humanities at Kings, former Subject Lead for Technology Enhanced Learning at the University of Bristol), and creative residents at Watershed’s Pervasive Media Studio.

This initial research will be co-produced between poets and technology experts in collaborative environments of experimentation, play and curiosity as they explore new processes of creating poetry with AI. Through these interactions, as well as conversations with members of the public and poetry/arts enthusiasts attending Lyra Festival, research questions will arise which may include:

• The ethical considerations of using AI to create art (such as impact on paid work for humans, and plagiarised content).
• Considerations about the impact of AI on the quality of poetry.
• Concerns about the impact of AI suppressing human ingenuity, and the essence of creativity as an essential part of what makes us human.
• Whether AI can lead to an increased level of engagement of poetry with the public.
• If AI can ever ‘replace’ poets, and whether human consciousness and lived experience necessitates a ‘good’ poem.
• The new technical processes and poetic forms that may become possible with AI.
• How poets can use AI as a positive tool to aid their creativity and combat ‘writer’s block’, through generating ideas, prompts, key phrases, thematic links, and more.
• How AI could provide a crucial tool for poets with access needs to write and create

Who are the team and what do they bring?

• Rebecca Kosick (Poetry and Poetics, University of Bristol) co-directs the Bristol Poetry Institute and founded the Indisciplinary Poetics Research Cluster at the University of Bristol. She has published multiple books on poetry, numerous articles, essays, and other fragments that address, translate, or are themselves poetry.
• Danny Pandolfi (Lyra, Bristol Poetry Festival) is a poet, rapper, educator and cultural producer. He has facilitated poetry, spoken word and rap talks and workshops in schools, prisons and youth centres across the country.
• Deanna Rodger (Lyra, Bristol Poetry Festival) won the UK Poetry Slam at age 18. Since then she has pushed down closed doors and held them open for others, curating spoken word events, facilitating workshops, writing prolific commissions, and mentoring. She is a Pervasive Media Studios Winter Resident and trustee of Easton Children’s Community Centre.
• Caleb Parkin (Lyra, Bristol Poetry Festival) is a day-glo queero techno eco poet & facilitator, based in Bristol. He tutors for Poetry Society, Poetry School and First Story. He was Bristol City Poet from 2020-2022.
• Shakara Thompson (Lyra, Bristol Poetry Festival) is a Jamaican-born creative based in Bristol. Their practice includes programming and AI, writing and performing spoken word, as well as singing and dancing.

What is to come?

The outcome of the research and development phase will be a panel discussion and community workshop at Lyra - Bristol Poetry Festival on April 20th 2024. The panel event will be an opportunity for the poets to share the new work they have written in a public event at Watershed, a venue itself committed to exploring the intersection of art and technology. The panel will feature academics from different fields, scientists and those involved in technology, as well as poets and creatives.

To ensure that the tone of the conversation is accessible, interactive and hopeful, poems will be read aloud as a ‘Bot Or Not’ interactive game. The poets will each read three versions of their new poem on the same theme: one written solely by themselves, one written ‘collaboratively’ with AI, and one written solely by AI. The audience will then guess which one they think is which, and this will lead to further observations and questions about the essence of poetry and human thought, shared during the event as well as in conversations and evaluation forms afterwards.

Lyra’s community writing workshop, taking place in the morning before the panel, led by Lyra’s 2024 Festival Poet Shakara, will give members of the public an opportunity to write poems using AI and technological tools. The workshop will involve writing exercises and prompts, talk/discussions, and opportunities for participants to share both their work and their thoughts. Shakara will, in particular, aim to engage global majority writers with conversations around AI and poetry, and Lyra will seek to engage panellists and partners from a diverse range of backgrounds to ensure these conversations are inclusive and wide-reaching. The workshop will be hybrid and available to online participants through Zoom, and the panel will be BSL interpreted.

The panel discussion and workshop will be recorded, and audience members given feedback questions. The qualitative data collected through discussions will inform and inspire a longer-term project throughout 2024 and 2025 which brings together creatives and thinkers across communities and academic disciplines. In the project evaluation, we will consider which voices are currently missing from the conversation and seek to build new bridges and dialogues.