The Future of Poetry with AI on the Horizon

In Conversation with Georgie Jones and Maarten Inghels; Poetry, Vulnerability and Embracing real Connections in a Digital Landscape

The relationship between a writer and his pen is sacred – however as time has inevitably rolled on, writers have evolved to anyone with an internet connection and pen has become our thumbs and devices. To better understand how this relationship between artist and tool (AI) can co-exist whilst still maintaining a truly human element within the creative process and even if maintaining that element is even necessary at all I sought poets of today who share some sentiments with me as I delve into the complex relationship between AI, poetry, amplification, and human connection. Firstly I spoke with Maarten Inghels, a published Belgian poet and writer, city poet for Antwerp, to further discuss his ideas around the future of poetry.  

Maarten Inghels (image: Joris Casaer)

I would love it if you could share a little about yourself and your work in your own words?

Well, I'm a poet, writer and visual artist. I work in different disciplines, making books, performances, sculptures. My latest work is a novel and I've been the city poet of the city of Antwerp for two years. 

Maarten recently worked with robotics company VOUW to create the Poem Booth, an AI Poetry machine that turns portraits into poems. The initiative sought to discover new interactive methods in which to motivate the public to engage more poetry, reading and writing. In VOUW words they do this through how “the booth leverages the existing body of work and input from writers coupled with advanced language models such as ChatGPT.” 

The Poetry Booth by Vouw - with the current version having poems which are tailored and tuned by Maarten Inghels.

Could you share how you got involved with this project? 

Initially they made a poem booth at a hackathon in January in which they could write poetry based on an image taken by a camera and image recognition software. They were satisfied by the result, but they were also aware that an haiku isn't that inspiring. So they wanted to have a professional poet that helped them, making poetry, that moves people, that really moves people and has an artistic value and asked me to get involved by helping them with the writing of the prompts within AI. The second question of theirs was whether the prompt could also write poetry in my style. 

How do you see the role of the poet evolving into a digital future? 

Well, I'm a really modern poet, but I am still holding to the old fashioned methods. I still publish poetry on paper. Poetry on the screen is still difficult, especially poetry on an e-reader because of the spatial alignments of poetry. However, I use AI sometimes to help me like I already asked ChatGPT to edit my poetry and it gave me quite good suggestions. 

Some critics argue that AI generated poetry lacks genuine emotion and human experience.

That's true. You have to be still aware that it's just mathematics. One word is set after another just based on mathematics and not on inspiration or emotion. But you still have the feeling that it's not really a moving poem that is not really made by a true feeling human and that's a problem. That's not something that we can solve in the near future. 

Do you have concerns that relying on AI generated or AI assisted poetry might dilute the emotional personal connections that readers typically have with the human authored poetry? 

It’s that critics say that AI generated poetry or AI generated art devalues the idea of art or poetry. For instance, if people think that a poem Booth is making genuine poetry, then it can devalue the idea of what for these people, poetry is or what poetry can be. 

Can you share your thoughts on whether AI has a potential to replicate or evoke genuine human emotions in poetry? 

Not in the real near future, I'm afraid. It would be surprising. There is even a true story about the chatbot that drove someone crazy and made him commit suicide. Something that frightens me a bit. That's the first time I had the feeling that AI has some sort of talent or energy to evoke these human emotions. But that's in a conversation, I think an AI powered chatbot can make you feel like you're talking to a real human but with art, it's a bit different. We value art more when we know there is a human authenticity behind it. 

Georgie Jones (Image: Noel Gay)

With her endless wit and charm, british poet Georgie Jones, offers a uniquely uplifting feminine voice to her online community through her work, largely consisting of short video style spoken poetry, which strikes a cord with her audiences shared experiences of womanhood, friendship, intimacy and the plethora of emotions we experience in a modern world. She has recently seen a huge boom in her social media audience which has only continued to skyrocket after several of her videos found popularity. I sat with Georgie over zoom to discuss her perspective on the future of poetry and why it's integral to have this medium as a way to authentically represent human emotion in an increasingly digitised landscape. 

Peering through the screens at each other we offer warm greetings and pleasantries, as well as apologies as she has a leaf blower in her background and I have a lawnmower in mine. Despite the surrounding gardening we jump right into a conversation surrounding one of Georgies passions and might I say talents!

I would love it if you could share a little about your work in your own words?

Totally – so my name is Georgie Jones. I am a poet and I suppose that I just like to always begin with my own experience and my own understanding of the world and I genuinely like to frame things in a kind of positive light. I think there's a lot of bad stuff and negativity in the world and I kind of put my poetry out there to exist as a bit of an antidote to the highlight reel that is social media to which we are all kind of increasingly beholden. 

Can you share some of your early experiences with poetry and what initially drew you to this medium? 

I think that words have always been the way that I understand the world even from when I was tiny, I was always kind of writing little bits and pieces, never fully formed, but just kind of getting thoughts out of my head into existence and that kind of seemed like a natural process for me. I've done lots of writing in lots of different forms – I write with a comedy group and I've written essays and stuff, but there's something about poetry I think it's kind of the playfulness of language when the words kind of take centre stage, really, that I find so enjoyable and that's the reason why I'm so drawn to it, I think. 

I've absolutely loved coming across your content because it feels as though it's speaking more to people, rather than trying to show off too much. 

Yeah, I have found the same; I think there's a lot of poetry in the world that takes itself very seriously. I used to do a lot of slams, and I found they had a reaction to my stuff that this was not the place for that kind of poetry. These slams would explore very important issues and injustices, which is so necessary, but I would sit for a two hour slam and feel like wow this is heavy. I used to say to people I do poetry, but not in a wanky way – no turtleneck or spectacles talking about deep psychological stuff. It should be accessible I think.  

Your work often explores themes like shared experiences of womanhood, friendship, romance and intimacy. What draws you to these themes and why do you keep returning to them?

I think I didn't talk about that stuff much when I was growing up, and I think it's so important and I just love communication, in all my relationships, and everybody goes through the same things. So something that is very important for me is that I am not afraid of oversharing or embarrassing myself if it makes other people feel less alone in their experiences. It's such a nice way to forge connection with everyone who has been through it too and that's what appears in the comments so often; everyone in the comment section is going “me too, me too” and I am like oh ok brill!.  So instantly we are all connected through shared experience which is such a lovely thing. 

Why do you believe your audience connects so deeply to the work you share?

Do you know what, it's so nuts I can't believe it, it baffles me every time! I did this hour long poetry show that I toured for a while and when I was writing it I talked to my director because I was very concerned about only writing from my own perspective and then kind of eliminating a lot of female experiences, not intentionally obviously, but I haven't had every experience. But she was saying the more personal you can make something, and the more you can double down, the more inherently universal it becomes because people take what is relevant and leave what isn't and put themselves in your shoes. I’m so blown away because the internet can be such a nasty and scary place sometimes but the comment sections are so overwhelmingly positive and wonderful, it's really like a lovely little place. 

You've found yourself a really lovely little bubble.

I have! And I'm really proud of it. Protect the bubble! 

Poetry can be a deeply personal form of expression. How do you navigate the fine line between self-expression and connection while still dealing with the vulnerability of opening up so personally on social media to such a large audience? 

I’m not really afraid of it, in the run up as I’m writing I think to myself ‘would I stand by this if this got into the wrong hands and would I stand by every single line in it were some part isolated and taken out of context’. Which did happen once, there's the poem which is about Nothing Tastes As Good As Skinny Feels and somebody took only the very first line, which really is not great, but it makes me think still im not afraid of vulnerability – I think there is this power in it and i’m really intent on trying to make everybody feel like they are less alone, that their experiences are valid, that we don’t have to know everything, that its ok to get stuff wrong and make mistakes and not even be like right well i've learnt that lesson now because sometimes you have to make that mistake ten times to learn the lesson. There is a lot of pressure and the older I get the more I’m just like we are so goal oriented trying to get to a certain point by a certain time that we forget to just enjoy everything that happens along the way and I think that's a real shame. 

In today's more digital age, and with your experience having a growing social media platform, how do you see your own poetry evolving? 

I tend towards the traditional, because my goals – like eventually I would love to find a way, I mean this is like my dream, to set up a little festival thing, that's less about music but definitely about poetry and connection with big long tables where everythings communal and everyones passing bowls of food to each other! 

Like a poetry lilith fair! 

Oh my gosh yes! That's exactly it! Because I think I'm kind of scared of so much technological advancement so I suppose when it gets to a certain point I would go back in time rather than pushing forward with it. But it (technology) is such a beautiful way to connect with people all over the world which I don't know how you would do otherwise – it's pretty special. 

Where do you think this desire to revert back from technology comes from? 

I think there is just nothing better than being in the same space, at the same time, doing the same thing; I mean it's the ultimate shared experience. I think experiences are only as valuable as the kind of people that you share them with and the people that really make them. Texting my friends versus having the exact same conversation in person doesn’t even compare and how you feel so fed from the real life interaction.  

I feel like we hold a lot of fear around certain aspects of technology and social media but I believe when utilised positively you can create these connections. 

Yeah totally, you really can and I think that’s the other thing, that there is not a lot of positivity and we consume it so often, it's so constant the consumption, that it's really important that I try to make the people that I follow across all my socials as kind of positive as possible – because it’s subliminal I think. I used to listen to loads of true crime all the time and then I'd feel sad all the time and then I thought, hang on a second, maybe I'm doing this to myself! Then I removed that from my brain space.

So you’ve tried to make your social space a positive escape for people?

Yeah definitely, I love that, positive escape. 

Artificial Intelligence and generated machine learning have taken of many industries as the newest hot discussion topic, this is also the case within poetry, journalism and writing in a broader sense. I would love to hear more about your perspective on the future of poetry and why it's integral to have this medium as a way to authentically represent human emotion in an increasingly digitised landscape but first I want to gauge your initial interpretation and feeling towards Artificial Intelligence?

I think that the actor Simon Pegg said something really beautiful in an interview where he was saying something along the lines of “you can get artificial intelligence to recite lines or write a script but technology has never had it’s heart broken and it’s never fallen in love and it's never experience grief” and I think it’s all of these things that truly connect us. I think objectively it can recreate something, it can make music, but it will never have soul in the same way that people have soul and I think that is what makes art so relatable in all of its forms. 

Video via The Associated Press

What is your perspective on those who might struggle with this innate ability to write and who might turn to technology? 

There is real safety in not talking to people about stuff – when you are having a face to face conversation it all has to happen then whereas some people do much better when they have time to compose a message and rewrite it before they have to send it. So I suppose if there was a way to speak freely to some sort of AI that you could then say can you reconfigure this as a cohesive poem then maybe that is helpful. 

How do you see the role of the poet evolving into the future?  

I mean historically it's quite exclusive and there are definitely still pockets of that, I think everybody is a poet. 

The Poetry Takeaway van (Image: Hayley Madden)

I agree, I mean so many people I have spoken with have some form of notes app on their phone full of poems!

Yeah of course they do! Of course, I worked for this company called The Poetry Takeaway where we basically have chats with people, in essentially what used to be an old burger van, we would sit and have a chat with someone and then turn it into a poem and then it's theirs to take away and keep. So often the way that people speak about themselves, or their loved ones or their own experiences all I do is kind of rejig it a bit but there is already so much poetry in the way people speak and the way that people see the world. Especially when their knowledge is very different from yours and can point out the beauty I might not see, there is so much beauty and poetry out there! So I suppose the role of the poet is to, in terms of technology as things become more screen based, to remind ourselves to acknowledge the beauty that exists everywhere – within ourselves, our relationships, nature, all of it and to remind ourselves to be less insular.