Living in Brexile, you find excuses for the United Kingdom’s dribbling bombast. You explain to mystified non-Brits that whatever they have been putting in the water will one day run out. That Merlin will return with Excalibur and Alec Guinness. Everything will be okay again.
So, I visited the British pavilion at Expo 2020 in Dubai this week with trepidation, not least because I knew poetry was part of the deal.
Some good news first. The UK department for international trade has commissioned a structure that is not covered in Union Jacks. You will see no mention of the second World War or derring-do or Victoria sponge. Unlike the Chinese pavilion, where the Chinese president Xi Jinping greets you on a Big Brother screen at the entrance, there’s no Boris Johnson and no evidence that the Downing Street decorators have been in. Unlike England, my Spanish partner was able to enter without feeling like a criminal.
Among the largely cuboid national hangers in the Expo’s opportunity zone, the British pavilion juts out like a giant ice-cream cone made of iced lolly sticks with one LED word at the end of each wooden spar. Creator Es Devlin explains the concept thus: “It uses an advanced machine-learning algorithm to generate the cumulative collective poem which illuminates its 20m diameter facade.”
Panama hats
So far so good. It all looks hugely edible. But does artificial intelligence (AI) make any sense poetically?
As a punter, your user experience goes a bit like this. You take an uphill walkway which doubles back on itself many times before you reach the start. Just like poetry. Half-way up a man tries to sell you useless American soft drinks. If you ask for Irn-Bru or Laudanum, he will tell you to talk to a supervisor. At the entrance, you are instructed to download an app to input any word you choose via your mobile into the evolving poem-a-thon. Here, Keats may have struggled. Byron would have got into a fight.
The cheery assistants in Panama hats explain that the resulting masterwork will be launched into space next year on a mission to develop a deeper understanding of Britain among alien lifeforms. I’m guessing any little green men with HGV licences come top of the list. They warn you that not every word will pass the test of the algorithm. Proper names like Nigel or Hancock are not deemed poetic enough. Anything inflammatory like cunnilingus, Millwall or socialism will be judged by AI as unlyrical.
My first attempt failed. I thought “footwear” would be pedestrian enough to pass, having discounted provocations like “stiletto” or “crampon”. A text message advised that I try again.
“Aardvark” had to work. The lexicographers’ dream. Besides, I’d seen “dove” up there on the front of the building already. Blaaaaaarp. Try again. Maybe only English animals, then.
I knew “goth” was doomed. As was “biker”. When the algorithm accepted “punk”, a beautiful thing happened. My mobile screen glowed and in seconds, I was sent the following piece of artificially intelligent verse . . . and there in the garden, watching the moon, I shall be the poppy and the punk.
Soft blue vague noise
My immediate response, as a poet, was think of what could have been . . . and there in the footwear, watching the goth, I shall be the aardvark and the crampon. More to my taste but I’m not an algorithm. What do I know? I checked the official poem on the front of the building to see if my “punk” had been included, but AI had changed it to “pink”.
Eight other attempts bombed until I hit “vague” in desperation. Once again, my phone beamed, and the following couplet arrived . . . The sky made a soft blue vague noise. With its own voice we could hear.
Thank you, British poetry. Take the weight off your iambic feet, Carol Anne and Imtiaz and Warsan and Simon. I’ve nailed it. This is Britain’s message to the cosmos in 2021. A soft blue vague noise.
Yet both successful verses had a disturbing cosiness. Words like “sky” and “moon” and “garden” are the perfect poetic tropes. If I had sat there all day sending my deviant words out into the “fragrant cloud”, I’m pretty sure they would have found “mist” and “stars” and “dreams” on their travels. While they would never have engaged in “hanky panky”, they might well have made “love”, and definitely had “kittens”, probably in front of a “sunset”.
Digital sorcery
Was all this digital sorcery just my old English teacher in the basement furiously deleting us all on his Blackberry? Or could it be part of grander design? Here is what Google’s algorithms told me.
The basic set of rules for generating the poetic couplets was shaped by AI experts and programmers with consultation from the Poetry Society, the Scottish Poetry Library and the Poetry Archive. Together they supplied 15,000 poems from more than 100 British poets in to “express the complex nature of humanity through verse”.
Nothing there about Hallmark greetings cards but I bet the department of international trade laptop featured a big shiny “optimism” button. Nobody wants to bump into “sociopath” or “yeast infection” at an international trade fair, although at the launch one British official did describe the experience as a mix between Davos and Glastonbury.
To return to the massive question, at what level does AI poetry work? Maybe there are accidental conjunctions that spur ideas and images in the mind of the reader, not unlike gazing at the drips and swirls in a Jackson Pollock. Yet even Jack the Dripper entails human agency and a degree of intentionality. Neo-Pavilionists might then argue that by patterning the poetry of hundreds of poets, they have effectively aggregated a poetical human voice. The more words then selected by the public only serve to make this voice even more human. Unlike the monkey-typewriter-Shakespeare example.
Yet without direct intention what truth will the space poem illuminate? That in 2021 we liked “hope” and “roses” and “birthdays”? That “needles” and “ska” didn’t exist? (Both on my reject list.)
I prefer to believe that this is the work of a maverick mandarin in Whitehall. “Build me a monument that epitomises the existential crisis of the digital age. Highlight our constant need for personal validation in an increasingly virtual world in which social media shapes human relationships. And do it before Nadine Dorries becomes minister for culture.”
If this is so, welcome back to the desert, Ozymandias.
Mark Fiddes is a poet and creative director living in temporary Brexile in the Middle East. His latest collection is Other Saints Are Available (Live Canon). Expo 2020, hosted by Dubai in the UAE, runs until March 2022.
