It is with great regret that Spread The Word has taken the decision to cancel this event along with the rest of the Deptford Literature Festival programme following the escalation of the COVID-19 outbreak.

There is an inherent bias in the poems that we see generated by machines, but, through community-led efforts, we can translate these poems out of English into other languages, along with raising awareness of AI algorithms made in languages other than English that generate poetry. This is a special workshop with Tice Cin and Khairani Barokka in partnership with the inaugural Deptford Literature Festival.

Participants in this workshop will translate the poetry of machines into other languages or ‘codes’, to explore how the translation process opens up questions around creativity, authorship and encoded bias. Participants have an option of sharing their responses made during the session to incorporate into an archive of poetry translated by humans into other languages from machine-generated poems – this is part of a wider project, which includes a soundscape of translated machine-generated poems.

This event might especially appeal to those who are bilingual and with some experience of translation, but all are welcome including those who only speak English.

This workshop is part of our ongoing young people's programme. This is an ongoing series of activities aimed at young people looking at the wider issues around poetry, translation and decolonisation.