To date, my poems have all been inspired by a friend, another poet I’ve known for a long time. I wrote ‘Rubbing’ and then asked ChatGPT to answer me in the style of my friend’s poem; one that means a lot to me.
Inputting his work alongside directives around dismissal, denial, love and rejection to see if I could get a surrogate response; like using a vibrator, I went seeking an AI fill-in during one of my friend’s silences. What I wanted was a (sort of) poetic conversation with this man in the absence of a physical one.
The AI used a symbiosis of both our poems alongside the directives to produce ‘ChatGPT standing in for you’.
I then responded to this romantic push back, with my poem ‘In Fill Trait’.
‘Very Bye’ was written more recently independent of the ‘Rubbing’ sequence.
I.
Rubbing
Lay the tissue over the image
Lay the hand over the parting
Tape the paper down
Push the tape aside
Take the crayon
Circle the wax in your fingers
Hold the rubber snake
Push the wax into each cleft
Roll the colour over the velum
Circle the Grafenberg Spot
Drift your finger playfully
Dance, a stranger’s collision
Draw the limbal rounds and round
Define as wearing down by friction
Oh, how I wear down by friction
Oh, how I wear down by
Oh, how I wear down
Oh, how I wear
Oh, how I
Oh, how
Oh
II.
‘ChatGPT standing in for you’
ChatGPT – Oh, how I feel the weight of these encounters, the slow erosion of my resolve under the relentless pressure of expectation. Oh, how I wear down, layer by layer, until all that remains is a hollow echo of what once was. Oh, how I wear, burdened by the weight of unspoken desires and unfulfilled promises. Oh, how I wear, weary of the dance of intimacy that leads only to emptiness. Oh, how I, trapped in this cycle of longing and rejection, yearn for a reprieve from the relentless tide of expectation. Oh, how, in the silence of my solitude, I find solace in the absence of connection, where the burden of desire is lifted, and I am free to simply be. Oh, how I, in my weariness, find a strange comfort in the void, where the echoes of past encounters fade into nothingness, and I am left alone with my thoughts, unburdened by the weight of expectation. Oh, how, in the quiet of my solitude, I find a strange kind of peace, where the weariness of the world falls away, and I am left alone with myself, unencumbered by the demands of intimacy. Oh, how I, in my weariness, find solace in the simplicity of my own company, where the noise of the world fades into silence, and I am left alone with my thoughts, free to wander where they may
III.
‘In Fill Trait’
Oh, how I want you more
Oh, how I wear your layer
Oh, how surrogate this rejection
Oh, how it moves me
Oh, how close. How close
Oh, how I move under
Oh, how I move under you
Oh, how I move under your demands
Oh, how I fell lumbered, encumbered
Oh, how I move for your resolve
Oh, how I weary at your feet
Oh, how the ‘magnitude’ of your
Oh, how your ‘Duke’s foot’
Oh, how it wears me
Oh, how I wear down by friction
Oh, how I still wear your time
Oh, how I’m never free
Oh, how finger and me keep
Oh, how we keep quiet
Oh, we keep company
Oh, how I wear down
Oh, how trapped are we
Oh, how the walls fall away
Oh, how I wear down by friction
Oh, how we wear down by friction
Oh, how we wear down by
Oh, how down we wear
Oh, how we wear
Oh, how we
Oh, how
Oh, we
Oh
N.B. After James Gilray’s caricature ‘Fashionable Contrasts: or The Duchess’s little shoe yielding to the Magnitude of the Duke’s Foot.’ 1792. National Portrait Gallery, London.
Very Bye
When you won’t see me I retreat to a small wound at the very split of my side. Caricatured very everyone else whilst I thread myself in unwritten words to the foot of your bed. And very tidily keep my nakedness from percale spread. Flat very incapsulate. When you can’t feel warm again. Very beat the cold flush. Very harmed. Very much. Very look at her all snake coiled or snake oiled sold with no pot of gold and still ageing by the report card. You see very much when you’re at a distance. Feather finger the tiny very wound. Oh, I very see, you’re asking for more than a pound of flesh. Will my feet do? I’ve never liked them very much. No? Ok. Body brush an ice formation very away. Very slither on my stomach from your bed to dawn. Very don’t. Very don’t. Brush me aside by my cut side forsworn to you.
Tamsyn Challenger
Challenger is a multi-disciplinary artist.
Her visual work has been featured in the Top 5 Guardian Exhibitions list twice.
She’s produced radio documentaries for the BBC, including ‘My Male Muse’, which became a BBC Radio 4 Pick of the Year in 2007.
Since she began writing poetry last year, her work has been broadcast on the Source Fm. Her first poem film ‘Fret’ was chosen as a Women in Word Lit Fest official selection 2024 and poems have been published or are forthcoming in Anthropocene Poetry Journal and Osmosis Press.
She’s currently the associate artist at Beaconsfield Gallery, Vauxhall and working with Colin Herd at Glasgow University on a series of events around contours and dynamics between visual art and text.
OSMOSIS PRESS 