The Society of Authors has recently justly expressed in ‘The Author The Journal of the Society of Authors’ its strong disapproval regarding authors’ work being sent to to A.I. generators to create texts for education. This is apparently frequently done without authors’ permissions or consultations. Similar doubts, I suspect, appear among online writers and bloggers who simply worry that their writing style, crafted for years, would be hacked into and reproduced in multiple ways depriving the original author of their well-earned and unique voice. These worries are of course not alien to me and I do often question online publishing knowing at the same time that a lack of online presence reduces greatly my own verbal productivity and outreach to minds that also like to create with words (or images). That said, on examining my own writing styles, I can simply say that I am also made out all that I read over the years and my own inner A.I. brain is defiantly activated when I read or hear good writing. Tuning into styles is very common for language learners and decoders and I think it is our common pleasure, just as artists like to create a bit in the style of someone.

A long time ago I attended a photography talk at a camera club given by Paul Mitchell on woodland photography. I do remember being very much inspired by his work. To copy Paul Mitchell is impossible but to embrace his appreciation of the subject does not require much, especially if you happen to grow up next to a forest but were somehow dissuaded from heading that direction and then felt cheated when the adults went there themselves just before Christmas to find evergreens to decorate. ‘So is the forest safe or unsafe to visit?’

I know what answer The Woodland Trust would give, especially when it comes to visiting their trees, ferns and fungi..

I have been writing for a while now some poetry and fiction that features little bits or significant elements of the woodland and I am overcoming my fear of being eaten by the A.I. monster. I hope you will find it enjoyable and I hope you will visit your nearest woodland soon before all the leaves are hijacked by the wind and pathways turn to mud.

Apparently, it’s going to be misty tomorrow… time to get the cameras ready.

Bye for now.

Poem

how sweet the sound of shadowed grass

made no disturbing threat unkind

how sweet the blacks on the bark unlit

that survived the wisdom

and the wit

of loving being so obtuse

that gave me no silence

no choice

but to refuse

the darkness so unkind to self

that went undone through childish maze

how kind of him to make me free

of liberty

to be all

I can be

i.e.

one

at

a

time…

Copyright Alicja Pyszka-Franceschini 2024

The poem forms part of the anthology ‘Bitter toes: Poems on Immaturity’ (title in development) or some other book of mine.