NMLCT: Poems

(Paperback)

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These poems explore the tension between the synthetic and authentic, raising hope for an escape from MCHNCT (Machine City) to NMLCT (Animal City), where real life might still exist.

Imagine The Matrix retold by the reanimated cyborg bodies of the Brothers Grimm.

Fables and fairytales collide with virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and monstrous myths in a world where no one knows what to believe. In his eighth book of poems, Paul Vermeersch responds to the increasing difficulty of knowing what is real and what isnt, what is our genuine experience and what is constructed for us by The Algorithm. In a post-truth society rife with simulations, misinformation, and computer-generated hallucinations, these poems explore the relationship between the synthetic and the authentic as they raise hope for the possibility of escape from MCHNCT (Machine City) to NMLCT (Animal City), where the promise of real life still exists.

These poems all precisely 16 lines long, identically formed as though mass-produced are themselves artificial creations, products of the imagination, sometimes disorienting but always vivid. They hold up a mirror not only to nature, but also to its unnatural distortions and facsimiles. In NMLCT, Vermeersch gives us his answer to an existence in thrall to the artificial. But it also foretells a different future, one where the air and the grass and the trees, and all the life they engender, might always be genuine and sensed and safe.

Author Bio

Paul Vermeersch is a poet, multimedia artist, and literary editor. His last book of poetry was Shared Universe: New and Selected Poems 19952020. A professor of creative writing and publishing at Sheridan College, he also edits his own imprint, Buckrider Books, for Wolsak & Wynn Publishers. He lives in Toronto, ON.