Delighted to be a part of the new edition of Streetcake Magazine, a stalwart of presenting experimental writing in the broadest sense.

I have enjoyed so much of the other work, and I do in particular recommend ‘Village Gossips’! Love it…

My thanks to editors Nikki and Trini. You can find and download a pdf copy here: https://www.streetcakemagazine.com/uploads/2/4/7/1/24713274/issue94.pdf

With my thanks to IT and Rupert for posting my poem here today: https://internationaltimes.it/watching-the-bathers/

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I posted the following observation on this blog a few days ago (20.1) with an attached TextArt sequence in response:

‘I recently came across an online video of a classroom video demonstrating an odious direct instruction lesson and the teacher-mantra ‘I say/you say’ followed by the student repetitions with their robotic, choric shouts of this obnoxious rote ‘learning’. Quite disturbing…’

At the time, I also wrote one other poem Instruction Reduction to further reflect my feelings. Those are still as strong, but my post today is exploring on a tangent – though linked – and that is my experience with Microsoft’s new AI ‘Copilot’ which comes with Word.

I also looked at this in another post on this blog (preceding…), and that was mocking my first output from Copilot with a TextArt piece based on the letter ‘z’.

However, in getting Copilot to ‘rewrite’ (respond) to my poem Instruction Reduction, I was immediately impressed with its version. I like the merging of words in its response which conveyed an experimental willingness from the off (the Iyou for I say/you say), but its continuing condensing of my original has for me a creative concision, and the linear format ignoring stanzas drives the poem with a potent simplicity.

A simplicity better than my observations here! I also like the way it ignored my rhyming. Indeed, its closing lines

‘of participating in a chorus

self

diminished’

were such an improvement on my original closing.

Here are respectively my original and Copilot’s version

And here’s the ‘dilemma’ about whether/how to use AI in one’s own writing. Up to now, my work with AI/ChatGPT hasn’t found it in any way useful; rather it has been infuriatingly and/or amusingly naff (though its visual poetry responses have been fascinating), so something that has existed outside and beyond my own writing.

This response from Copilot seemed/seems a creative improvement on my original. But I can’t just appropriate it; certainly not call it ‘mine’. That said, I did take its conclusion to prompt the rewriting of mine, as you can see here,

I’m not sure why I have persisted with the rhyme here. It is especially ironic as the most exasperating experience I have had with ChatGPT writing poems has been its insistence on rhyming, even when tasked to compose poems about not rhyming…

I think the Copilot experience is going to be quite demanding: richly and otherwise.

This is the Windows/Word new AI assist, though in this instance my flying with is not as in zoaring but simply being in the seat next to.

Working in a Word document you now have a ‘Copilot’ which – as shown above – will ask if you want any AI assitance with whatever you have written. You can be offered an option like turning your writing into a table format or as above with ‘Inspire me’.

In my first use, I was playing around with generative TextArt using the letter Z. What I produced wasn’t all that interesting, and so I tried Copilot for the first time.

It’s ‘inspiration’ is the fith in the sequence below. Well…!

I recently came across an online video of a classroom video demonstrating an odious direct instruction lesson and the teacher-mantra ‘I say/you say’ followed by the student repetitions with their robotic, choric shouts of this obnoxious rote ‘learning’. Quite disturbing…

With my thanks to IT and Rupert for posting my poem – read it here: https://internationaltimes.it/listening-out/

With thanks to Rupert and IT for posting my poetry review of Kenny Knight’s collection ‘Love Letter to an Imaginary Girlfriend’. Highly recommended, and read review here: https://internationaltimes.it/memories-realities-imagination/