Poetry and Emerging Technologies

A computer scientist and a poet discuss poetry and creativity.

Duke English invites you to attend Poetry & Emerging Technologies as part of the department's Creative Writing series. This event will feature poet Lillian-Yvonne Bertram and Duke Computer Science Professor Cynthia Rudin as the two discuss poetry and creativity.

Lillian-Yvonne Bertram is an African American writer, poet, artist, and educator who works at the intersection of computation, AI, race, and gender. They are the author of Travesty Generator (Noemi Press), a book of computational poetry that received the Poetry Society of America's 2020 Anna Rabinowitz prize for interdisciplinary work and was longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Poetry. They are the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship. Their other poetry books include How Narrow My Escapes (DIAGRAM/New Michigan), Personal Science (Tupelo Press), a slice from the cake made of air (Red Hen Press), and But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise (Red Hen Press). Their fifth book, Negative Money, is available now. They direct the MFA in creative writing program at the University of Maryland. Their new chapbook, written with AI, is called A Black Story May Contain Sensitive Content and won the 2023 Diagram/New Michigan chapbook contest.

Cynthia Rudin is the Earl D. McLean, Jr. Professor of Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Statistical Science, Mathematics, and Biostatistics & Bioinformatics at Duke University. She focuses on machine learning tools that help humans make better decisions, mainly interpretable machine learning and its applications. Rudin received the 2022 Squirrel AI Award for Artificial Intelligence for the Benefit of Humanity from the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). She has also received a Guggenheim Award to support her work in transparent and socially responsible AI. Professor Rudin also works at the intersection of AI and the arts, having coached student teams in developing tools for poetry generation.

Sponsors: Duke English, the George Lucaci Endowment, The Duke Initiative for Science & Society, and National Humanities Center Responsible AI Curriculum Design Project