Athens, 16 & 20 July

Infinite Genesis held poetry workshops in ΛΑΛΑ (pronounced LALA), 39 Derigny Street, 10434, Athens on Saturday 16 July 2022 at 19:00 and Wednesday 20 July 2022 at 19:00.

The events are over but check out other events at ΛΑΛΑ – you can read the results in our writeup below.

Participants wrote poetry and subjected it to various processes of decay, mutation and change. The two events are standalone.

The workshop was open to the public. We were in residence at ΛΑΛΑ from 16-21 July and happy for people to stop by to talk to us and try out the tech.

EXPERIMENT 2: Results

CREATE _ MUTATE _ REPEAT

In this workshop, hosted by the wonderful people of ΛΑΛΑ, we looked at lists, inspiration, Loop and haibun. We experimented with Loop and writing techniques which everyone really got into.

We looked at the haibun form, a prose paragraph followed by a haiku, here are some examples by Basho and some modern examples. Participants wrote the prose and we asked the AI to write a haiku (it is still learning about syllables but Basho’s translated haiku often forego the structure to stay true to the meaning and we like to think Infinite Genesis in it’s AI wisdom does the same). Here are some of the participants Haibun:

Travelling through Europe for me is one train after another ever since I stopped flying back in 2006. The trains of Europe are like spiderwebs flowing continuously from point a to point x. Like me, they don’t fly but they weave. Everytime I am about to change from one train to the next, I can feel the trains melting. Like the persistence of memory.

Trains of Europe
Weaving through the continent
Like spiderwebs

The rain was heavily pouring down my head but I could not feel it as I was wearing a helmet made from epoxy resin. A swallow flew past winking at me as I tried to open the door of the mansion. I felt tears in my eyes. It was December.

The door won’t open
Rain pours down my head
A bird flies past me

Yesterday by the train lines i heard the verse that was till now incomplete. You were next to me, you looked me in the eyes, realising together with me that the right timing is such an important and wrong thing. Togetherness is a sneaky little bastard and it gets me while i look the other way around. The train never came and i felt complete.

The train never came
And we were forced to wait
Together in silence

My grandad used to take me up to his caravan on the weekends. The caravan was in Elterwater in the Lake District, surrounded by beautiful mountains. He would go to sleep and I would lie watching the rain fall on the orange tinted roof. At 3 or 4am he would wake me with a breakfast of sausages and eggs. We would then climb a mountain together in time for the sunrise through the drizzle. We rarely spoke. I preferred him to anyone else in my family.

Grandad and me,
Up in the mountains high;
Early mornings, rain.

Every November I harvest olive trees. There is something Wicked on olive trees. Even though People love their taste and use olive oil for cooking, I am sure this trees hide something bad in their core. the leaves have two sides, one dark-green and one silver-green. The air that goes through the leaves makes them change color and that’s the way this tree emits it’s evil intentions. I was baptized Christian at the age of one. Olive oil was used as part of the ceremony. Since then, I am evil too.

Olive trees hide their
evil intentions behind their
leaves’ two-sided colors

The capsule of Benadryl is blue and filled with a transparent gel which is as luscious as the sea in Capri, or alternately, as antiseptic and cruel as alien food. When I take the Benadryl I listen to the same song on repeat for 4 hours and disappear into a haze of pleasure and unreality. I am stumbling.

A capsule of blue
Filled with a transparent gel
I disappear into

We finally arrived at the fair through a narrow bumpy unmade road up in the mountain. We had just missed the service and all the bishops were boarding their luscious BMW in a rush, like all celebrities after a performance or a concert. We bought pork skewers and sat at a table listening to the live music. No one dancing but a there year old boy, who picked up a slice of bread from the ground and started eating it. It was generally boring and every now and then three or four people entered the dance floor for a short dance. But of course when they played my mom’s favourite dance, the sousta, we both got up and danced the jig steps. After this, there was no more reason to stay longer, so we took the same bumpy unmade road back to my grandma’s village.

The fair is boring
All the bishops are gone
But we still dance sousta

She was the eldest of 10 children. Not all of them survived. The only son was born last. Surrounded by sisters, she was her father’s son, protector of the family. He would take her to help him with all the heavy work. That’s why only she was given a stool in the house. The rest of them sat on the floor. Her father had the teacher, the only one who knew how to write, to crave something underneath the stool:

A single stool in
the house, for her father’s son.
The rest of them sit on
the

Years ago I went with my best friend on the top of the highest hill of an island to look at the stars and talk about life’s struggles, we were both sad and lonely since we both got distant from a common friend we used to love but disappointed us, we talked about different directions one is taking within their life through their actions within a community and then we started commenting how funny a couple of stars were looking since we were drunk af. He told me that sailors in order to find the right direction while sailing they have to define two spots on the horizon. I draw a huge number 2 on a wall with a dot next to it and we laughed for an hour looking at it.

Stars in the sky,
Two points on the horizon,
Sailors find their way.

We spent most of the day at his house in the village. Me, him and his nearly blind and deaf grandpa. In the afternoon we decided to go for a stroll. Even though it was still summer it started to rain. Wearing shorts and flip flops we took a brown umbrella and went outside. We went right past the temple ruins and continued through the fields. It was getting dark, and I decided to follow some lights in the distance. We heard the sound of a car coming close and got scared. We tried to hide behind some bushes until the car went away. But we lost our balance and fell in a deep pit. Having bruises, cuts, and being wet and covered with mud we managed somehow to come up and return home.

Two lovers stumble
Into a muddy hole, their
Bodies covered in soil