TECHNOROTICA

The First Safe Landing of the Peoples Republic of Poetry

It was billed as the “first safe landing of the Peoples Republic of Poetry.” It was April, 1972. It was a polymedia poetry performance held in the lecture hall of Loyalist College of Applied Arts and Technology in Belleville, Ontario.

A stage hand wheeled a large tape machine onto the stage. Out walked the Dipoematic Ambassador of the Glorious Imagine Nation of the Peoples Republic of Poetry, dressed in a white tuxedo. “Welcome to the first safe landing of the Peoples Republic of Poetry. Our purpose on Earth is to prepare the people for the advent of technocrazy.”

The dipoemat pushed a button; the machine ran the tape, a screen lowered from the ceiling, and presented imagery consistent with the text being performed. The audio performance was pre-prepared and various studio effects modified the voice. The 20-minute show was totally automated

The lights came up. The Poet was nowhere to be seen. The Machine started up again and invited the audience to ask questions. What was the poetocol to asking a machine a question? In 1972? No one asked. The invitation was again requested – nothing. Assistants removed The Machine.

The literary crème de la crème from McGill came to watch; Poet Louis Dudek, Dr Alec Lucas, head of the English Dept who were instrumental in launching my first book of poetry, Walking On the Greenhouse Roof. They were highly disappointed that I had subsumed poetry to The Machine performance. The students felt otherwise.

This was the first manifestation of the Peoples Republic of Poetry. This divide caused some troubling considerations. I was young and inexperienced in the circles and triangles of the poetry community. I did not consider myself to be abandoning poetry; indeed, every action going forward, I put poetry as central, in spite of the heavy use of technology.

I billed myself as LANGTEK (Language Technician) and continued to send poems to Canada’s literary journals. Sometimes I would bill it with a PRP Dept, Ministry of Textraordinary Affairs, or Creative Intelligence Agency or Federal Bureau of Inspiration. The poetry was still ‘regular’ except for my various pseudonyms. For the next 15 years, everything published was via my Single Identifying Number, known in Canada as a Social Insurance Number. ”Wally Keeler” soon disappeared from the scene. My SIN was my avatar, indeed, the entire apparatus of the Peoples Republic of Poetry became my avatar.

The ‘regular’ poetry gradually morphed into ‘computerized’ poetry, not composed by a computer, but by me instructing The Machine what to do. This led me to ransacking Stats Canada for data to process.