Leaving MCHNCT

‘So long Mr Wozniak…’ We can’t wave goodbye to Mr Jobs either for he is already off so we are left with the cautionary view of the poet, Paul Vermeersch, contemplating a future with a runaway computer typing along the screen and thumbing its nose at us NML (animal) creatures. 

As a vision which parodies this future Vermeersch gives us his fifth book of poetry, knitting together statements, diagrams and images of an altering universe. Vermeersch challenges us to respond to his poems, ironically like a eighteenth century man set to duel; instead of drawing out his blunderbuss to challenge the local official on diminishing rights and freedoms, Vermeersch sets the tech Lords in his sights. The challenge in the book is to see if the light is still on inside the mind of the thinking man and the candle still raised to the poetry cause.  ‘Inside a mirrored box,’ is a little test of commitment to this cause, an example of a poem cancelled out, literally with a line through it, repeated several times on the page and then offered up again as complete.  Is this the message of NMLCT, that we are relinquishing control on our own ability to think critically to challenge and take a stance, a decision? Accompanying these poems which self-reference older works, ie ‘Second Piggy’, are Vermeersches dim view on modern life which show his love of words and art and science; ‘alphanumeric’ responses and ‘misanthropes’ send up up the fearful tone. 

 It is a collection of a gentle distopian reality, a slow burn, like dropping a frog in tepid water and then turning up the gas underneath. Animals (NML’s) previously felt the pain of living in the city (Between the Walls). Now the animals are pink of flesh, cowering in cubicles, programming Sat Nav’s to their final destination. I hail Vermeersch for writing to the Eden Fest to protest AI training and teaching of writing methods. During the pandemic it was hard to see how the writing industry would survive, how we would survive. But survive we do, revived we are. 

The message of Vermeersch is prescient.  When I saw the movie AI in the late 20th century I felt the movie was great because of the human nature of the robot played by Haley Joel Osmont. It occurred to me it was so good because of the human quality of the performance. Daleks do not reach the same level of human feeling, do they? Dr Who feels far more chilling to me now.

In the U.K. I attended a writers symposium that said that AI just simply turbo charged routine admin tasks so was a safe bet, but was no threat to creatives. Is this what it was like for the vaudeville acts and dance halls when television flickered on in the 1930’s? In the past living between two continents I have heard it said that North America, Canada in my case,  is behind Europe. In this case isn’t it better to heed Vermeersches cautionary voice; you still have time to say so long Mr Wozniak, to create the world you grew up in.