Letters to the Editor

Yours for a mere £14.99

Harry Gilonis writes: I enjoyed your editorial in PN Review 287.  I haven’t myself asked AI to write a poem in ‘my style’, though there is a mechanically-created poem published online under my name, as part of a vast conceptual-art ‘joke’ (I have accepted it as ‘by’ ‘me’, read it at readings, and it appears in my Carcanet collection Rough Breathing).  I saw an AI ‘biography’ of ‘me’ a few years ago – not wildly wrong, but definitely not right either.  However, just yesterday, spookily, the below floated into my field of vision... I had trivially misremembered the town of Annacotty (Co. Limerick) as ‘Enniscorthy’, and in trying to check it online found AI explaining me to myself:

‘River Slaney: New Year’s Day’ by poet Harry Gilonis includes scenes of the poet walking around Enniscorthy, County Wexford, reminiscing about his childhood.

I have obviously set myself the task of writing this poem, and have asked assorted friends, Irish or living in Ireland, if they can supply some authentic details of my childhood in Leinster, and the sort of things I’d remember about Enniscorthy – at New Year’s, or any other time.  (My having not actually set foot anywhere in the County Wexford rather nullifies any contribution I might make.)

I’m still intermittently at work on Martial, and this still-very-rough cut from Xenia XIII.3 is pleasingly on-message:

Omnis in hoc gracili xeniorum turba libello
constabit nummis quattuor empta tibi.
Quattuor est nimium? Poterit constare duobus,
et faciat lucrum bybliopola Tryphon.
Haec licet hospitibus pro munere disticha mittas,
si tibi tam rarus quam mihi nummus erit. […]

Everything jumbled into this little book
can be yours for a mere £14.99.
If that’s still too steep then haggle in the shop,
Carcanet, I’m sure, will still make some money.
You could give extracts to your friends at Christmas,
if you see fivers as rarely as I do. […]