The Woodlot

By Chris Banks

Artificial Intelligence, once the hallmark of Science fiction where a rogue AI might strand humans in space, or kill a crew member on a space station to protect the secret of its own sentience, is now, unfortunately, a modern reality, but unlike its Sci-fi counterparts, the AIs of today–the Chat GPTs and Geminis–seem completely ignorant of their assault on human creators: the “coders” and writers and freelance artists they are forcing into precarious unemployment. So much for “intelligence”.

And yet, in the space of three years, we have gone from viewing Artificial Intelligence as an innocuous, technological “toy” or fad, capable of generating twenty new “selfies” of ourselves, or writing a lightning-fast, perfect gimmicky sonnet about Three’s Company, to what it has become now: a digital Kaiju that, instead of destroying Tokyo, is sucking up water and energy and jobs, jobs, jobs. Graphic designers are going back to school; Psychology majors are changing majors given that they are being told the future is AI therapists; publishing programs are being outright canceled by college administrators; educators are being forced to sit through lectures on how to implement AI into the classroom.   

Even my own bright, creative senior English high school students are no longer considering an English degree as a viable option for University. The vast majority of them are going into STEM related degrees in the hopes they will have a job after three or four years of post secondary education. Anxiety is running high.

And then today, a friend on Facebook asked a pertinent question in the wake of the Chicago-Sun Times scandal where a single freelance journalist did not fact check an AI generated summer reading list so the paper published the names of books that do not even exist. The question my Facebook friend asked: Is publishing books of poetry still viable in a creative landscape decimated by artificial intelligence?  

It is a question many of us have been secretly asking ourselves, but for me, the answer is an unequivocal yes! And yes! And yes again. 

Given the sudden rise of authoritarianism, and the chilling effect of artificial intelligence on creative people, I think we need that human electrical, emotional connection – one person talking to another person – which all good poems create, and although AI may be able to “trick out” a poem in a Petrachan rhyme scheme, it will never know unrequited love, or human loss in any meaningful way.

This has not stopped the Tech bros and Oligarchs, of course, from trying to grow more rich on the promise AI will somehow replace artists and writers. They are gambling with hundreds of millions of dollars to try to get us to accept one of the few things that makes a lifetime of soul-sucking labour and financial precarity meaningful, which is art–and now they want to take even that out of our hands. 

‘Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life’, said Picasso. Well, artificial intelligence, in contrast, is the dust of human thought. And human labour. 

AI is a big spaghetti cloud of algorithms, and stolen artwork, meant to mimic human emotion and human artistic abilities, but it will never feel saudade the way a human poet does. AI might be able to define saudade, and create a Cliff Notes poem on the theme, but it will never, never write a poem like William Butler Yeats’ “When You Are Old”. 

“Talent talks; genius does”, said Theodore Roethke. To my mind, artificial intelligence is big on talk. 

Not that my kibitzing about the dangers of artificial intelligence really matters in the long run. The venture capitalists are still incredibly bullish on the belief artificial intelligence will be successfully monetized, will somehow invade every nook and cranny of our inner emotional lives, and I am not so naive as to think shaking my fist at a digital ‘cloud’ is doing very much, but collectively, as creative people, we can resist, and not make it easier for artificial intelligence to take over our critical thinking and our creative endeavours.

For myself, I have a book called The Bureau of Useless Splendour coming out with ECW press Fall 2026, and I have already prepared what I hope to be a New & Selected poems for publication a few years after that. Will I write another book of poems beyond these two collections? 

I think yes, but I am slowing down, and taking more time. I am trying to be even more intentional with my poetry. I am currently working on a poem broadside project with a letterpress studio out of Toronto. I think for poetry to continue to matter in the future we need to keep nurturing a vibrant literary community by reviewing poetry collections, creating reading series, and by most importantly, buying poetry books. 

 To the question, is publishing books of poetry still viable in a creative landscape decimated by artificial intelligence? My answer is a profound yes because poetry has made all the difference in my own personal life. Making a life in poetry, in the arts, for so many of us is the thing that gives life meaning. 

It’s not that I’m trying to save my own life through writing poetry, but I guess all our creative lives. All of us together. 

The literary ecosystem is essentially a large Ark spaceship AI is currently attempting to wreck by its repeated existential warnings to evacuate, evacuate before hull damage takes one more critical hit. Maybe I’m wrong but I say ignore the warnings. I say ‘Stay the course’. I say, ‘Shields Up’ people. And buy more poetry books! 

Chris Banks is an award-winning, Pushcart-nominated Canadian poet and author of seven collections of poems, most recently Alternator with Nightwood Editions (Fall 2023). His first full-length collection, Bonfires, was awarded the Jack Chalmers Award for poetry by the Canadian Authors’ Association in 2004. Bonfires was also a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Award for best first book of poetry in Canada.  His poetry has appeared in The New Quarterly, Arc Magazine, The Antigonish Review, Event, The Malahat Review, The Walrus, American Poetry Journal, The Glacier, Best American Poetry (blog), Prism International, among other publications. Chris was an associate editor with The New Quarterly, and is Editor in Chief of The Woodlot – A Canadian Poetry Reviews & Essays website. He lives with dual disorders–chronic major depression and generalized anxiety disorder– and writes in Kitchener, Ontario.