{"id":10835,"date":"2022-10-11T11:31:51","date_gmt":"2022-10-11T11:31:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/?p=10835"},"modified":"2025-02-03T12:02:24","modified_gmt":"2025-02-03T12:02:24","slug":"machine-poems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/2022\/10\/11\/machine-poems\/","title":{"rendered":"Machine poems"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018\u2026when I write about being a cyborg, I challenge reality\u2019
\n\u2014The Cyborg Jillian Weise, \u2018How a Cyborg Challenges Reality\u2019 (The New York Times)<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018Every sexuality has a knowledge and technology and every new way\/to move beasts from one crate to another produces a metaphor\u2019
\n\u2014Holly Pester, \u2018Are You Writing About Love?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018A poem is a small (or large) machine made of words.\u2019
\n\u2014William Carlos Williams, \u2018The Wedge\u2019<\/p>\n

You\u2019re probably reading this on a machine. But what does that mean? Is a machine a single discrete object, or would it be truer to describe it, like the body, as a composite of many variously sized machines?<\/p>\n

Perhaps you\u2019ve printed out this page. In that case you\u2019ve made use of a machine which, in an earlier, bulkier form, could lay claim to being one of the most potent machines ever developed (up there with the washing machine and the machine gun), in terms of the shift it instigated between humans and language (see Walter J. Ong on the technologizing of the word and Benedict Anderson on print capitalism).<\/p>\n

The poem was famously described by William Carlos Williams as \u2018a small (or large) machine made of words.\u2019 Was the poem always a machine? Or did that transformation occur when the printed page \u2013 whose contents were designed for silent consumption \u2013 supplanted the oral traditions of incantation and song?<\/p>\n

The theme for our co-edited issue of The Rialto<\/em> is MACHINE, whatever you take that to mean. Your poem could be nothing more or less than a self-conscious machine. It could make use of machines like Jay Gao\u2019s experiments with Lillian-Yvonne Bertram\u2019s algorithmic poetry scrambling tool. It could feature machines real or imagined, like Brenda Shaughnessy\u2019s time machine. Jayne Cortez described the blues as \u2018instruments imitating the human voice and the human voice imitating machines.\u2019 Maybe you take a similar approach. Maybe machines are a part of your identity. You might identify as a cyborg (see The Cyborg Jillian Weise\u2019s NYT<\/em> article on the subject).<\/p>\n

In its relationship to the machine of capital, your poem will always be fixed. But perhaps it\u2019s possible to make language aware of that, to charge it with an energy that might evade the determined death drive of money. This issue of a poetry magazine won\u2019t overthrow the great machine of the capitalist state, but it might just question its supremacy for the length of time it takes to hold a poem in the machine of your body. So send us your poems!<\/p>\n

\u2014 Ella Frears & Will Harris<\/em><\/p>\n

Rialto 100 Submittable is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Image: Nick Stone. Machine<\/em>. A machine-dreaming AI image created using Midjourney.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018\u2026when I write about being a cyborg, I challenge reality\u2019 \u2014The Cyborg Jillian Weise, \u2018How a Cyborg Challenges Reality\u2019 (The New York Times) \u2018Every sexuality has a knowledge and technology and every new way\/to move beasts from one crate to another produces a metaphor\u2019 \u2014Holly Pester, \u2018Are You Writing About Love?\u2019 \u2018A poem is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":10836,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10835"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10840,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10835\/revisions\/10840"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}