Over at the Tees Women Poets, there have been some fascinating recent experiments with the relationship between AI, poetry, and ways to describe women. I’d like to share one of my experiments here.

The following poem is one I wrote for a TWP performance at Drake the Bookshop, for Feminist Book Fortnight. It is inspired by the non-fiction book Going with the Boys by Judith Mackrell, an account of six of the very first official female war correspondents, many of them from privileged yet problematic backgrounds, some of them trading on personal and sexual relationships (e.g. with Hemingway) to get their big breaks, and at least one of them ending up spying and smuggling people out of Nazi-held territories. All of them using femininity as a tool and a disguise, to divert danger and obtain information.

How To Get Ahead As A Female War Correspondent, 1930

So, daddy left mommy?
Daddy beat mommy?
Daddy didn’t love you?
Daddy loved you too much? – whatever,
	Heiress, It Girl, bluestocking, black sheep,
Hitch your long legs around a brand new Daddy and make the wild leap.
You’re a bright girl, and you’re restless, so choose your ride judiciously –
Aristocrat? Diplomat? Editor? Author?
Who do you have to screw around here for the chance to prove 
you are more than a gossip reporter?

Outrage them.
Hook Hemingway in Florida, and before you can say ‘exclusive’
you could be reporting the war in Spain, dancing
around the rubble and each morning’s wet and sudden stains,
your gold bangles clinking and your fox-fur neat.
Ignore the hacks and hounds who scoff no matter what  
you wear on your pretty little feet. 

Outdrink them, and outcharm them
in beleaguered Barcelona, in Berlin’s cellar bars,
at country house shoots and by candlelight
in Libya, Moscow, Bechtesgarten; play nice
with generalissimos of every stripe -
	Hitler, Stalin, William Randolph Hearst,
some men are all the same, hungry for the bloodbath
that will make their name. 

Feed their vainglory. Smile, darling, and they won’t refuse -
You’d look great if you made a little effort!
You gotta schmooze to get the news!
just don’t mention that your relatives are Jews –
that’s when the shadow men slide after you in their quiet cars
that’s when you feel your nape prick at the telephone’s flat click -

Outwit them. 
They underestimate your brains, your bravery –
Pretty little polyglot
Cub reporter, trot, trot, trot
In the embassy limo, finesse your way through border lines
Bat your eyes, a shopping trip, too blonde for spies,
Just can’t get Schiaparelli in a city prepped for siege, 
Just happen to glimpse the Panzer ranks, the massed Blitzkrieg,
Stash that in your boutique bags, quick
Glitz and ditz your way back ‘home’ to the last hotel open,
the one international phone, and –

Scoop! Outwrite them!
When they say you’re getting reckless, threaten to quit.
Forge exit visas for thousands, hold your nerve, get away with it,
You could not have covered society pages for one more minute!

So
When adrenalin gets you pumping,
When your mean heart’s bomb-blast-thumping,
When ambition gets you jumping to catastrophe’s rhythm, say
you don’t know where the boys are going
but by god you’re going with them.

I fed the poem into craiyon.com with the prompt “Create a photo based on this poem”. I tried the entire piece, and then experimented with using it in sections. Our hypothesis was that the first words were likely to influence the overall composition, like an ingredient list on a food packet showing you the highest percentage ingredient first.

What do you think of these images?

I wondered where some of the people of colour have come from, was the mention of Libya enough to get some of the North African vibes in the first slide? It’s much more than I expected. Why is the AI weighted in that direction? Where is Moscow, or Florida?

I was unsurprised to see that the bot is a leg man and a foot fetishist!

I was most irritated that I didn’t know to save screenshots, so was clicking the Save To Collection button only to lose everything several times. The very first results were incredible in their Paula Rego-esque looming dark surrealism, I felt like they absolutely captured the atmosphere of threat and danger I tried to portray in the poem. Each subsequent attempt got weaker results. Alas, you will have to take my word for it – that the long legs were flung higher and stranger, and there were orphanage-camps full of sheep-headed babies and women with slits in their feet…

My conclusions?

Still pending, but I know I’m not interested in generating sweet, neat, pretty and complete images, therefore I’m actually quite taken with these. I am still haunted by the images lost (the literally upholstered society lady, her eight hands caressing the limousine door, the slutty nurse with the several legs). What if I tried now to draw these images and the ones I remember, using charcoal perhaps? Is this essentially a good way of making preparatory sketches?

One thing I have learned – with the image-stream of AI, you really never can step into the same river twice.