Puzzle Poetry was pleased to welcome poet-programmer Allison Parrish Friday, March 25. She gave a craft talk and led a workshop. Both events were held in Wilson 142.
Parrish brought along a Python routine–all bundled up in an online notebook–that generates nonsense poems. Workshop attendees were encouraged to run and poke at the code and learn a little about natural language processing. The event was open to all lit critters and creatives; Oulipeans, controlled vocabulary poets, and Pythonistas were especially encouraged to show and many from English, Creative Writing, and CS attended. No programming knowledge required to participate.
Parrish is an Assistant Professor at NYU Tisch in the Interactive Telecommunications Program. She is the author of Articulations, a book of computer-generated poetry, and the co-creator of the board game Rewordable. Many of her hijinks are collected here: https://www.decontextualize.com