Friday, July 18, 2014

Automatic for the people: Jackie Kay's robot poem for Milton Keynes

Why is a robot writing poetry in a shopping centre in Milton Keynes? It's all about Jackie Kay finding her birth mother – and losing her to dementia

Gijs van Bon pours Jackie Kay’s lines
‘Nothing is what it seems’ … Gijs van Bon refills his writing machine. Photograph: Frantzesco Kangaris for The Guardian
If, as Wordsworth said, poetry is human emotion recollected in tranquillity, what happens when verses are scrawled in sand on the floor of a shopping centre? When they are left unguarded, to be kicked and scuffed by customers wandering into Costa Coffee or New Look?

We'll find out this week, when a robot called Skryf snakes through the Centre MK in Milton Keynes, spelling out lines by Jackie Kay.
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