Ryan1
Drawing inspiration from Lily’s junk journaling practice and a conversation with Rob about the contemporary AI crisis in poetry. A frustration I have in workshops is the expectation of being autobiographical or “legible” in poetry, despite living in a morally totalitarian surveillance state. I also get frustrated at myself and my own work sometimes in attendant ways (i.e., is not being “legible enough” just cowardice, or are their other ways to approach and provide legibility without commodifying/re-performing trauma, subconsciously clout-seeking, or selling others out—I refuse to source my code of creative ethics from Joan Didion). Making a cento out of my own “digital junk” seemed like an easy way of being more transparent about who the “I” (me) behind my “speakers” are (because they truly are speakers—they are never me), while staying on the tightrope of: (1) making full intention hard for an AI to scrape or archive; (2) not confessing or pathologizing or capitulating to some singular narrative of identity; (3) still trying to shape something intentional that points at humanistic or “spiritual” concerns. Will keep experimenting with these I think.