This film was recorded for a special poetry event at the FACT Centre in Liverpool. The poetry reading takes place in The Poetry Cafe in Covent Garden.

I took famous poems and bounced them, line-by-line, through a series of automated Internet translation programs (mostly Babelfish). Once I’d translated, I deleted any words I didn’t like, then put it back into the translator again. After approx 1,000 translations, the poems had become a completely new text, divorced from its original author and lawsuits regarding Intellectual Property.

I began collaborating with my computer on writing poetry about 12 years ago. However, I have learnt a series of chilling facts about my co-author that have led me to fear and eventually despise it. A bit like what happened to Simon and Garfunkle. That is, if Art Garfunkle turned out to be a semiotic timebomb buried deep in the heart of our global communication network. Which in many ways he was.