"The AI Literary Review" - Quarterly online journal showcasing AI poetry

Richard A Carter

Boid Poems

^{Boids (standing for 'bird-oid' object) is an artificial life algorithm developed by Craig Reynolds in 1986, which uses a simple set of rules to simulate the flocking behaviour of birds and other animals. In this continually-generating poem, a recording of which is presented here, the movement of each boid is driven by a vectorised model of language developed from literature discussing this kind of emergent behaviour across technical, conceptual, and aesthetic registers. Each individual boid attempts to formate with others whose assigned words are topically similar, clustering and splintering as they go. These words change randomly over time, to keep the flock in a state of flux. Boid Poems can be viewed live and interacted with on}^{this website}^{(desktop recommended!).}

NJ Stallard

Oh yes, I remember that dream!

The way you opened with that image

searching through distant

muffled coat pockets

at the quality party

where guests spoke in dial tones

the call coming from inside

the short, panicked bursts

of a birthday cake

you searched

for something crucial

tooth and nail prayers

a reflection multiplied

in the beautiful middle section.

^{The poet asked Claude to analyse a dream they'd had about a party and a lost phone. It analysed the dream from both a Freudian and Jungian perspective. Claude was then asked to write a poem based on this dream, which the poet heavily edited.}

Toby Anonymous

Tine Fonderr

Fellows, clearly you face abuse.
Our dog beat the smoke.
And his frame ignited you, the job’s over.
Owing to the space made large and furnished.
It's your brain in your ear.
This is the you over raids of urge sea.
For you for today or the fallacy you urge.
Thanks to prior, the hope of time, these ages.
See that you fight for yourself.
Turkey that holds you and steers the time.
Looking at soccer, catching my needs.
All the things that I finally have.
Be hard you, they grant you.
Their hug-heart voice inciting ideas.
And for you your abode of dens.
There that eve the tall mare casts.
Its calm wiry spell.
Your plea, you went and departed.
And have the will that is your trophy.
They wish for a boon.
Their king reigns on read.

^{DeepAI was asked to generate an image of “a poem on a page”. The image it produced contained mostly illegible words. DeepSeekAI was asked to extract as much text from the image as possible, and to “guess” when it couldn’t accurately decipher a word. The resulting text was amended by the poet, and the title remains unchanged.}

Fannah Palmer

This bone

1.

This bone is made to be closed. It is very high.

The price of the market is made to be dried.

It is very high. Drink –

It is made to be heated with hot honey.

It is also called depression. It is very high.

This bone is made to grow very tall.

This is a very high-rise building.

threatening the air (illegible) threatening

threatening the air (unclear) threatening

This bone makes climbing very difficult.

This bone makes –

This is a form of the past year.

It is a form of the past year. The past year is a form

of the past year.

The word ‘symbol’ is used interchangeably –

threatening anthropology

This bone is very high. This bone is called dry.

This bone is made to grow very fast.

most of the time

More, more, more Yes, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no

Normally I’ll be here soon…

threatening the air (unclear) threatening

The bones are made to run fast.

This is a very high-rise building. It is also called honey –

It is growing very fast. Also called honey –

Drink Drink Drink Drink Drink

The price is increasing. The price is increasing very much.

The price is increasing very much. The price is increasing very much.

Pay Pay Pay Pay Pay

threatening the threatening the threatening the ending

threatening the ending

^{The poet copied text from a PDF, showing up as little squares ("}^□□□^{") instead of words, into Google Translate. She first translated these squares into different languages and then back into English. The poem is a result of this experiment, with further edits being made by the poet.}

Paige Jones

Saturn

The magic planet
Juggles its moons.

Six blind eyes
Echo inside.

The egg is bursting,
It runs rings around the yolk.

Thunder and lightning
Over the scaffolding.

Hits like a cymbal.
Mute in the void.

The echo, a black hole.
The eye opens a world.

^{ChatGPT was given an original poem and instructed to continue it. The poet erased most of ChatGPT’s output, keeping just a few phrases. The poet then re-ordered these phrases, and added some words in-between, to create a poem about Saturn.}

Mike Ferguson

Secrets Whisper Louder Than Stars

^{ChatGPT was asked to ‘in no more than 8 words, write your best poem’, and it produced "Stars whisper secrets; silence blooms louder than words". After some back-and-forth with ChatGPT, and some human editing, the poet produced the poem "Secrets Whisper Louder Than Stars", which he then turned into this piece of TextArt.}

Alex Mazey

Collecting Crystals in the Poolrooms or the Panic of a Timed Level

^{The visual elements were created using a combination of ChatGPT and DeepAI, then edited with ColorSync Utility. Final composition and layout of the image and text collage were completed in PixelStyle Photo Editor.}

Angeliki Malakasioti

Neo-Lettrist Manifesto (after Isidore Isou)

I : T H E / E X H A U S T I O N / O F / T H E / W O R D

word.word.word.word.
// shattered → into → l e t t e r s → shattered → again → into
v e c t o r s

Everything speaks now —
but nothing says anything.
∞ text, ∞ content, ∞ sameness.

We have entered the phase of algorithmic exhaustion.
Every possible word is already indexed.
Every sentence pre-written.
Every story, pre-dreamed.

We declare the alphabet obsolete.
We declare the sentence a simulation.
We declare the word a husk.

II : R E T U R N / T O / S I G N A L

⟜ prompt > paragraph
⟜ vector > verb
⟜ glitch > grammar

We will misuse the machine.
We will bend all meanings.
Until they hallucinate.

This is the latent space where infinite languages slumber.

unexpected beauty
unexpected perils
unexpected noise

III : N E O H Y P E R G R A P H Y

l e t t e r s + c o d e + d a t a +
actions++pixels++bulks++errors

{poem: [shifting, mutable, endless]}

{manifesto: self_rewriting=True}

{reader: co_author, co-critic}

Our stanzas will bug us.
Our novels will loop.
Our paintings will train their spectators.

IV : I N T E R F E R E N C E / A E S T H E T I C S

inject // noise // into // signal
break prediction
sabotage autocomplete
detune coherence

This is the ART OF LAG.
This is the POETRY OF MISUSED TOOLS.
This is the SONNET OF NULL WORDS.

V : M U T A N T F U T U R E

Let the letter decompose.
Let the prompt mutate.
Let the AI disobey.

We proclaim the Aesthetics of Interference.

The poem that rewrites itself in real time.
The novel that refuses to end, even when closed.

👁 break the machine while using it
👁 feed it paradox until it chokes
👁 carve meaning from its noise

THIS IS NOT RIGHT OR WRONG—
THIS IS A LEAP
BEYOND LANGUAGE
BEYOND LETTERS
BEYOND HUMAN AND INHUMAN

Finite and infinite
coherent and collapsing..

^{The poet used ChatGPT to reconstruct Isidore Isou’s}^{Manifesto Of Letterist Poetry}^{(1942), reimagining it for a contemporary world where words and texts are deconstructed not by hand but by algorithms. The prompt asked for a reflection on the era of AI, where language is dissolved into data and endlessly recomposed by humans and machines — a response to the original Lettrist call to break language apart and rebuild it into something new.}

Gustavo Gomez Mejia

The Bank of Wonderland

’Twas brillig, and the slithy rates

Did gyre and gimble in your vault;

All mimsy were the savings’ fates,

And credit out of default.

Beware the overdraft, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Wonderland of funds,

The interest’s hidden match.

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

Your balance grows, your bills away.

Withdraw, invest, consume, and play —

The Bank of Wonderland holds sway.

^{ChatGPT5 was used to make a collage, blending an Alice in Wonderland-themed vintage ad for Libby’s Tomato Soup and a photograph of a vandalised ATM. A credit-card prototype was crafted with a fictitious cardholder name: « El Jabberwocky ». The oft-pastiched Lewis Carroll poem was then style-transferred to appear as a nonsensical promo campaign.}

CipherMyst

^{DeepAI was used to generate multiple images of "a business meeting". The poet then selected a number of these images and arranged them into a loose narrative comic strip.}

About the authors

Dr. Richard A Carter is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Culture at the University of York. Carter’s academic practice investigates how digital technologies shape the ways that we sense and make sense of the world, defining different possibilities of action and expression.

NJ Stallard is a writer and editor. Her pamphlet Her Fault won the Hollingworth Poetry Prize and was published by Partus Press. [website]

Toby Anonymous is a writer and web developer based in London.

Fannah Palmer is a Dutch-US American literary translator and writer, currently living in Amsterdam. Her work has previously been published in AMBIT Magazine, Red Fez and Middleground Magazine.

Paige Jones lives in Dorset. Her writing life runs alongside teaching and community projects.

Mike Ferguson is an American permanently resident in the UK. His TextArt work is widely published in books and online magazines/journals; it has also been used for poetry book covers, including the Magma 90 'Grassroots' 30th anniversary edition.

Alex Mazey won the Judge’s Prize in the Magma Poetry Competition in 2025, a Creative Future Writers’ Award in 2019, and the Roy Fisher Prize from Keele University in 2018. A contributing researcher on sociology and postmodern theory for the international academic journal Baudrillard Now, he is also the author of Sad Boy Aesthetics (2021) and Living in Disneyland (2020). His debut poetry collection, Ghost Lives: Cursed Edition, was published in 2024 by the award-winning Bad Betty Press. A new collection, RIVAL STREAMER : AI SLOP X BRAINROT (In)Finity Warriors is forthcoming from Trickhouse Press.

Angeliki Malakasioti is a multidisciplinary artist and academic living in Greece. She is Assistant Professor in the Department of Audio and Visual Arts, Ionian University. Her artistic and research activity focuses on the intersection of technology and human experience, digital culture, conceptual design, and multimodal discourse.

Gustavo Gomez Mejia is a media studies scholar and a creative research practitioner. His interests include digital cultures and semiology – topics to which he has devoted a series of academic articles. He was born in Colombia and he currently lives and works in France as an Associate Professor at the Prim research unit of the University of Tours.

CipherMyst is the alias of a poet who wishes to remain anonymous.

This issue was edited by Dan Power, and published on 1 October, 2025.

Issue Six