Dear Sarah
Midjourney AI in America
imagined the scene of Knaresborough
nearby nearby here in Yorkshire.
The viaduct carries trains to this day
but this small train drawn by Hokusai
has brought that artist through
both time and space
to envision Knaresborough
as a Japanese woodcut.
Whether you approve of AI. or not
this is a feat of creativity
of some sort which even
the makers of Midjourney
do not fully fathom…
© Andrew Wilson, 2024
This last year, both I and many poets I know (in the Internet sense as opposed to the real world or the biblical), have started illustrating their work using AI images whose results are sometimes so stunning as to distract from the poems being illustrated. So are we shooting ourselves in the foot, gilding the lily…
The Poetry Postcard Fest is a challenge which encourages poets to write an unedited poem on a postcard and send it to a stranger. It is organised by the Cascadia Poetics Lab, which arranges the participants into lists of 31 + yourself for you to address your offerings to. This was my second year and I was on List 10. The lists are sent out in early July and you have until the end of August to send out your poetic missives – to date I have received 18 of 31 possibles and now that we are into September, it is allowable to share the cards and poems you sent.
Although the original poem is to be sent as written – crossings out, blots and all, I have typed them out for people who can’t read my writing and I am allowing myself to edit if I feel like it…