I did a writing project with classmate Sujay Sood where he generated 100 AI surrealist images and invited me to write an “automatic” poem in response to each trying to keep the theme around gender stereotypes/feminism. The work was non-linear, generative, playful, and questioning.
It was a fun challenge to bring these themes into generative writing and feel my way into the images and satisfying to produce around 35 pages of writing. I think it also illustrates how cross-disciplinary collaborations can strengthen work on both sides.
If this kind of collaboration can come from someone in my own course, there are exponentially more possibilities for collaboration with more opportunities to meet and cross-pollinate with people from other courses, departments, and schools!
Calloh, callay
I radiate, pulsing
This is right
My gown and my veil
Armouring me
Supernova into my place
I’m a wife
The word rolling through me
To pool in a tingle at my toes
This has always been
What matters
Tearing pages from bridal magazines
To tape to the doors of our grey lockers
In aspiration
Transpose ourselves
To me now here
Filling
Heart pounding big against the cage
Grin splitting my face
Heat cracking her knuckles
Mouth slashed red curling at the edges
Inside light pushes
Around objects
Bending
Us all
Rounding bellies
Against
I can feel her
There and because thought
Stops when bodies take over
That is all I can do
Feeling
Clothing me like ash
Is it time to change like changing clothes?
When I ask you if you’re a feminist
The word slipping with a weight of assurance
The history multiplying
Battles and gains and power deferred
Support for those less seen
The women and some men
Adding pieces of themselves
Until the doctrine the ism confers
Is a complex ecosystem unfolding
For me
For you the word is a stale heel of bread
Best tossed to the ducks in the park
So you shrug, easy
Letting it fall to the floor
What do you think I found?
Nowhere for myself to go
Unless I wanted to plunge down
Into the seven circles of hell
Looking between the W above
or into the M below
I saw only danger, flames as well
Spitting and skitting like evil doves
So I turned and decided
Hell, I need to go home
Is there nowhere gender can be avoided?
Is there nowhere free to roam?