Can the Computer Make You a Better Writer?

The computer also owns a wool cap and a copy of Infinite Jest. — The computer also owns a wool cap and a copy of *Infinite Jest.*

This term in Reading the Digital we’ve been looking at generative poetry. Who is the author of computer-based poetry? Can coders be considered creative writers? And how accurate is the name ‘computer-based poetry’ in the first place. Long before we used computers to make interesting and unexpected combinations of words we used techniques like cut ups and madlibs. Artists like David Bowie and William Burroughs have made names for themselves by harnessing randomness in this way.

As a novelist, I love ‘computer-based’ prose and poetry because of the surprises that they often bring. So much of creation is about trying to create these unexpected moments when language clashes in ways we couldn’t have guessed, and computer programmes can help us do this on a larger scale, much more quickly.

To understand how much or little human creativity is required in computer generated poetry, I asked my third-year students, in groups, to have a go at creating their own. They chose verbs, adverbs and adjectives, but the structure was immovable. Sometimes the template referenced the poet the generator had borrowed from, as with Sylvia Plath in the final poem, “Blue Pizza, Blue Pizza.”

After the poets were finished, the groups took it in turns to close read each other’s poems, and it was a fascinating exercise. Decoding the images and word choice when we knew so much about the intention and randomness affected how we approached the text, but we were quickly able to decipher the poems. It was more apparent, too, how each individual brought themselves to the text. It was fun to see the ways in which this, to a large extent, random text could begin to exude meaning. Did it express unconscious desires? What could we learn about poetic techniques through this process?

We chose to include the generator’s mistakes, because we enjoyed the way that they disrupted the text, as well as nodding to the non-human dimension of their creation.

See for yourself.

Blue pizza, Blue Pizza

I swim my trains and all the dog flagellates s ventriloquist ;
I be my puppets and all is flash again.
(I caress I suffer you up inside my president.)

The universitys go dusting out in black and cold,
And round clock sears in:
I produce my spaghetti and all the sheet slams penne.

I crawled that you hindered me into winter
And create me unnecessary, disenfranchiseed me quite rotary.
(I caress I suffer you up inside my president.)

corpse animates from the model, hill's sunshines self-defenestrate :
hypnotise lampshade and computer's clown:
I produce my spaghetti and all the sheet slams penne.

I collaborateed you'd split the way you fly,
But I decompose spiky and I dispose your meme.
(I caress I suffer you up inside my president.)

I should have jumped a mime instead;
At least when protractor sprints they flash back again.
I produce my spaghetti and all the sheet slams penne.

(I caress I suffer you up inside my president.)