Poetry

THE ELIZABETH TAYLOR AIDS FOUNDATION HOSTS "STUCK IN THE 80S NIGHT" ON NATIONAL HIV IS NOT A CRIME DAY IN ATLANTA

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, February 22, 2024

ATLANTA, Feb. 22, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation (ETAF) announced today its "Stuck in the 80s Night" to be held at Center Stage in Atlanta on National HIV Is Not A Crime Awareness Day – a national observance the organization commemorates on February 28. The event centers awareness about HIV-specific criminalization laws established in the 1980s by educating about the impact of outdated legislation and celebrating the resilience of people living with HIV.

Key Points: 
  • ATLANTA, Feb. 22, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation (ETAF) announced today its "Stuck in the 80s Night" to be held at Center Stage in Atlanta on National HIV Is Not A Crime Awareness Day – a national observance the organization commemorates on February 28.
  • The event centers awareness about HIV-specific criminalization laws established in the 1980s by educating about the impact of outdated legislation and celebrating the resilience of people living with HIV.
  • "Gilead Sciences is grateful to support the work of The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, the Health Not Prisons Collective, and other key partners in our collective fight against the unjust criminalization of people living with HIV.
  • Joint advocacy efforts continue to modernize and repeal outdated HIV-specific criminalization laws in more than 30 states.

David Victor Joins Syska Hennessy Subsidiary 'Syska Innovations'

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, February 21, 2024

NEW YORK, Feb. 21, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Syska Innovations, a subsidiary of Syska Hennessy Group, has appointed David Victor as innovations manager. He is based in New York City.

Key Points: 
  • NEW YORK, Feb. 21, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Syska Innovations, a subsidiary of Syska Hennessy Group , has appointed David Victor as innovations manager.
  • "Dave has extensive experience in product development and workflow optimization," says Robert Ioanna, executive principal and chief technology officer at Syska Hennessy who oversees Syska Innovations.
  • Syska Hennessy Group is a leading global, full-service MEP, information and communication technology (ICT), vertical transportation, and commissioning engineering firm.
  • Syska Innovations LLC, a subsidiary of Syska Hennessy Group, fosters attitudes and behaviors that lead to innovation within a supportive culture that prizes technology.

Weifang Intangible Cultural Heritage of China Appears at the Spring Festival Gala of the the Year of the Loong in Arras, France

Retrieved on: 
Sunday, February 18, 2024

Recently, an art feast for the Spring Festival in the the Year of the Loong was held in Arras, France.

Key Points: 
  • Recently, an art feast for the Spring Festival in the the Year of the Loong was held in Arras, France.
  • In addition, a special exhibition titled "Weifang Intangible Cultural Heritage Overseas Tour" was held on site, hosted by the Weifang Municipal Government Information Office.
  • On each booth, Weifang has a dazzling array of intangible cultural heritage works, including Spring Festival couplets, Paper Cuttings, kites, and New Year pictures.
  • In recent years, more and more overseas students and local people have participated in the activities of the French Spring Festival Gala.

Introducing our Books & Ideas newsletter

Retrieved on: 
Friday, February 16, 2024

With shrinking space in many newspapers for serious discussion of books and ideas, we think our expert writers are offering something different.

Key Points: 
  • With shrinking space in many newspapers for serious discussion of books and ideas, we think our expert writers are offering something different.
  • Now, we’re taking the next step, launching a dedicated Books and Ideas newsletter.
  • As well as reviewing the latest fiction, non-fiction and poetry, we’ll be showcasing new series on feminist classics and books that have become cultural touchstones.
  • Current subscribers to our daily newsletter will not automatically be sent this newsletter - you’ll also need to subscribe.

Should Taylor Swift be taught alongside Shakespeare? A professor of literature says yes

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, February 15, 2024

It’s 2024 and he was born in 1564, and she’s only 34.

Key Points: 
  • It’s 2024 and he was born in 1564, and she’s only 34.
  • Sliding her into the classroom would be yet another example of a dumbed-down curriculum.
  • Well, the dates might be, but not the assumptions – about Shakespeare, about English, about teaching, and about Swift.
  • In Sweet Nothing, on the Midnights album, she sings:
    On the way home
    I wrote a poem
    You say “What a mind”
    This happens all the time.
  • Read more:
    How did Taylor Swift get so popular?

An ally of literature

  • Regardless of what The Tortured Poets Department ends up being about, Swift is already a firm ally of literature and reading.
  • It’s that the discipline of English literature is flexible, capacious and open-minded.
  • A class on reading Swift’s work as literature is just another English class, because every English class requires grappling with the idea of reading anything as literature.
  • A class on reading Swift’s work as literature is just another English class, because every English class requires grappling with the idea of reading anything as literature.
  • I will be teaching Midnights and Shakespeare’s Sonnets together in a literature unit at the University of Sydney this semester.

Teaching Midnights and Shakespeare’s Sonnets

  • I also teach three modern artworks that shed contemporary light on the sonnets.
  • Bervin prints a selection of the sonnets, one per page, in grey text.
  • In each of these grey sonnets, some of Shakespeare’s words and phrases are printed in black and thus stand out boldly.
  • Unlike Bervin’s and Kennard’s collections, in which individual pieces relate to specific sonnets, there is no explicit adaptation.

Deep connection

  • The fun challenge of writing a pop song is squeezing those evocative details into the catchiest melody you can possibly think of.
  • I thrive on the challenge of sprinkling personal mementos and shreds of reality into a genre of music that is universally known for being, well, universal.
  • Her point is that the pop songs that “cut through the most are actually the most detailed” in their snippets of reality and biography.
  • She says “people are reaching out for connection and comfort” and “music lovers want some biographical glimpse into the world of our narrator, a hole in the emotional walls people put up around themselves to survive”.
  • Swift claims that Midnights lets listeners in through her protective walls to enable deep connection:
    I really don’t think I’ve delved this far into my insecurities in this detail before.
  • This connects very well with the agenda of Midnights.
  • Swift’s songs and Shakespeare’s Sonnets are meditations on deeply personal aspects of their narrators’ experiences.
  • Swift’s persona is that of a self-reflective singer, just as Shakespeare’s is that of a self-reflective sonneteer.

Close reading


Shakespeare’s sonnets are rewarding texts for close reading because of their poetic intricacy. Students can look at end rhymes and internal rhymes, the way the argument progresses through quatrains, the positioning of the “turn”, which is often in line 9 or 13, and the way the final couplet wraps things up (or doesn’t).

  • Karma and Mastermind are simpler, yet contain plenty of metaphoric language to be unpacked for meaning and aesthetic effectiveness.
  • Such unexpected pairings are valuable because they require close attention and careful articulation of what is similar and what is not.
  • How about High Infidelity and Sonnet 138 (where love and self-deception coexist), considered in terms of truth in relationships?
  • There is nothing to lose and plenty to gain in teaching Swift’s Midnights and Shakespeare’s Sonnets together.


Liam E Semler receives research funding from the Better Strangers project which is a collaborative education research project between the University of Sydney and Barker College. Better Strangers hosts the Shakespeare Reloaded website (https://shakespearereloaded.edu.au/) and explores innovative approaches to teaching and learning Shakespeare.

iwot and D1srupt1ve Join Forces as True SourceTM to Unleash AI Magic on “The Wheel of Time”® - Private Beta Now Available

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, February 15, 2024

D1srupt1ve's dedication to the ethical application of AI technology complements iwot production’s goal of elevating The Wheel of Time from passive and static media into an immersive, interactive, and personalized experience.

Key Points: 
  • D1srupt1ve's dedication to the ethical application of AI technology complements iwot production’s goal of elevating The Wheel of Time from passive and static media into an immersive, interactive, and personalized experience.
  • Today, The Guide is fluent in 40 languages and able to understand more than 100.
  • This language capability will be expanded to dozens of other languages, including The Old Tongue from The Wheel of Time.
  • The AI service is also capable of composing stories and poetry inspired by the rich lore of The Wheel of Time.

New York youth honored as Prudential Emerging Visionaries

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, February 13, 2024

NEWARK, N.J., Feb. 13, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Sunya Afrasiabi, 17, of Buffalo, and OlaRose Ndubuisi, 16, of Pittsford, today were each named a 2024 Prudential Emerging Visionary for their inspiring commitment to improving the lives of others.

Key Points: 
  • Prudential Emerging Visionaries recognizes young people ages 14-18 whose fresh perspectives and innovative solutions address pressing financial and societal challenges in their communities.
  • Prudential Emerging Visionaries is sponsored by Prudential in collaboration with Ashoka, a leading organization in the social impact sector, with advisory support provided by the Financial Health Network, an authority on financial health and a longtime partner of The Prudential Foundation.
  • The program is an evolution of Prudential's Spirit of Community Awards, which honored more than 150,000 outstanding youth volunteers over 26 years.
  • To read about all of this year's Prudential Emerging Visionaries, visit prudential.com/emergingvisionaries .

Can ChatGPT edit fiction? 4 professional editors asked AI to do their job – and it ruined their short story

Retrieved on: 
Monday, February 12, 2024

We are professional editors, with extensive experience in the Australian book publishing industry, who wanted to know how ChatGPT would perform when compared to a human editor.

Key Points: 
  • We are professional editors, with extensive experience in the Australian book publishing industry, who wanted to know how ChatGPT would perform when compared to a human editor.
  • To find out, we decided to ask it to edit a short story that had already been worked on by human editors – and we compared the results.

The experiment: ChatGPT vs human editors

  • The story we chose, The Ninch (written by Rose), had gone through three separate rounds of editing, with four human editors (and a typesetter).
  • The first version had been rejected by literary journal Overland, but its fiction editor Claire Corbett had given generous feedback.
  • We had a wealth of human feedback to compare ChatGPT’s recommendations with.
  • By comparing it with human examples, we tried to determine where and at what stage in the process ChatGPT might be most successful as an editorial tool.

Round 1: the first draft

  • (Authors submitting stories to magazines and journals generally don’t give human editors a detailed, prescriptive brief.)
  • Interestingly, ChatGPT did not pick up that the story was now published and attributed to an author.
  • Nor did it define the genre, which is one of the first assessments an editor makes.
  • And the advice for more foreshadowing, dialogue and description, along with shorter paragraphs and an alternative ending, was generally sound.

Stage two: AI (re)writes

  • Could you please suggest places in the story where the pace needs to speed up or slow down?
  • Could you please suggest places where there is too much imagery and it needs more action storytelling instead?
  • Could you please suggest places in the story where the pace needs to speed up or slow down?
  • Could you please suggest places where there is too much imagery and it needs more action storytelling instead?
  • ChatGPT also changed the text from Australian English (which all Australian publications require) to US spelling and style (“realization”, “mom”).

What did the human editors do?

  • The biggest problem is that final transition – I don’t know how to read the narrator.
  • For me stories are driven by choices and I’m not clear what decision our narrator, or anyone else, in the story faces.
  • It’s entirely possible I’m not getting something important, but I think that if I’m not getting it, our readers won’t either.
  • It incorporates intellectual, creative and emotional capital – all gained from lived experience, complemented by technical skills and industry expertise, applied through the prism of human understanding.
  • (After all, the author doesn’t have to do what we say – ours is a persuasive profession.)

Round 2: the revised story

  • Next, we submitted a revised draft that had addressed Claire’s suggestions and incorporated the conversations with Nicola.
  • Again, it didn’t pick up that the story had already been published, nor did it clearly identify the genre.
  • It was a laborious process: the 2,500-word piece had to be submitted in chunks of 300–500 words and the revised sections manually combined.
  • Read more:
    'The entire industry is based on hunches': is Australian publishing an art, a science or a gamble?

Round 3: our final submission

  • In the third and final round of the experiment, we submitted the draft that had been accepted by Meanjin.
  • This time, we followed up with separate prompts for each element we wanted ChatGPT to review: title, pacing, imagery/description.
  • ChatGPT came back with suggestions for how to revise specific parts of the text, but the suggestions were once again formulaic.
  • There was no attempt to offer – or support – any decision to go against familiar tropes.


Sometimes editorial expertise shows itself in not changing a text. Different isn’t necessarily good. It takes an expert to recognise when a story is working just fine. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. It also takes a certain kind of aerial, bird’s-eye view to notice when the way type is set creates ambiguities in the text. Typesetters really are akin to editors.

The verdict: can ChatGPT edit?

  • But we recommend editors and authors don’t ask it to give individual assessments or expert interventions any time soon.
  • A major problem that emerged early in this experiment involved ethics: ChatGPT did not ask for or verify the authorship of our story.
  • Human editors demonstrate their credentials through their work history, and keep their experience up-to-date with professional training and qualifications.
  • In Rose’s case, her oceanic allegory about difference, with a nod to the supernatural, was turned it into a story about a fish.

ChatGPT is ‘like the new intern’

  • AI suggestions can be scrutinised – and integrated or dismissed – by authors or editors during the creative process.
  • But when used by human editors, it’s like any other tool – as good, or bad, as the tradesperson who wields it.
  • Renée Otmar is affiliated with the Institute of Professional Editors, the Australian Society of Authors, Writers Victoria, Small Press Network and Life Stories Australia.
  • She is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Faculty of Health, Deakin University.

Ten of the best romantic films to watch this Valentine’s Day

Retrieved on: 
Monday, February 12, 2024

However the nature of love and the portrayal of different kinds of relationships have always been explored on film, right from the early days of “talkies”.

Key Points: 
  • However the nature of love and the portrayal of different kinds of relationships have always been explored on film, right from the early days of “talkies”.
  • So if we must indulge in Valentine’s Day, let’s do it with ten very different romantic films that examine the variety of configurations of this most human of conditions.

1. The definitive romantic comedy: When Harry Met Sally … (1989)

  • Written by the late great Nora Ephron, who made her name writing and later directing iconic romantic comedies such as Sleepless in Seattle, this film shows something that many romantic comedies often don’t: time.
  • Taking place over 12 years, the film asks the question “Can men and women ever just be friends?” At first glance, the film’s ending might seem to say “no.” But another, perhaps more positive way of interpreting the ending is that true friendship is the bedrock for lasting romance.

2. Longing for longing: Call Me By Your Name (2017)

  • The film is intimate and well-observed, capturing the difficulties and discoveries of young love, particularly how emotionally overwhelming it can be.
  • The affection between Elio (Timothée Chalamet) and Oliver (Armie Hammer) often goes unspoken, but is communicated in other ways.

3. For the poly-curious: Design For Living (1933)

  • It’s the classic love story: boys meet girl, girl cannot decide between them, boys and girl agree to live together.
  • Design For Living still surprises to this day with its subtly risqué and humorous examination of diverse forms of romantic relationships.

4. For the anxiously analytical: Modern Romance (1981)

  • Albert Brooks is one of the great all-time analysts of the modern condition, and this film is no different.
  • Co-written, directed and starring Brooks, Modern Romance explores the agonising question: “is this truly the one?” Caught between his anxious tendencies and a sense of self-importance, Bob (Brooks) has an on-again, off-again relationship with Mary (Kathryn Harrold), in which his insecure but controlling nature escalates, making for a hilarious film.

5. The soundtrack to great love and grand gestures: Moulin Rouge! (2001)

  • The romance between Christian (Ewan McGregor) and Satine (Nicole Kidman) is a classic love story, but this tale also captures romance in another sense, that of Romanticism, an art movement emerging in Europe that prioritised emotional truth.
  • is the story of an artist coming into their craft through life experience, in this case, romantic love.

6. Love from a political angle: Tongues Untied (1989)

  • As the film’s poster declares, this film is about black men loving black men.
  • In its poetic merging of documentary footage, poetry, dance and autobiography, Tongues Untied illustrates that black men loving black men is in itself an act of defiance and resilience.

7. The charm of first love: Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop (2021)


Working at an elderly care centre over the summer, two teens forge a bond that blooms into first love. But both also have anxieties that stand in the way: Cherry around speaking in public, Smile around her buck teeth. Kyohei Ishiguro’s Anime romance warms the heart and make you yearn for the warmth of both summer and that blush of first love.

8. Love in a relatable mid-life crisis: Crossing Delancey (1988)

  • Isabelle (Amy Irving) is a bookstore clerk who admires the world of literary elites in New York.
  • While she has eyes for the new big-name author in town, her grandmother has other plans, working to set Isabelle up with a local pickle salesman.

9. The throwback romantic comedy: Down With Love (2003)


Taking inspiration from classic 1950s and 1960s romantic comedies of Doris Day, Rock Hudson and Tony Randall, Down with Love is about two writers whose pride and ambitions clash in classic romantic comedy fashion. Featuring sizzling performances by Rene Zellweger and Ewan McGregor – with hilarious turns by David Hyde Pierce, Sarah Paulson and Tony Randall himself – director Peyton Reed twists the romantic comedy formula to great effect, making for a colourful, fun and feisty film.

10. The bittersweet romance: Past Lives (2023)


Nominated for best picture and best original screenplay at the 2024 Academy Awards, Past Lives rounds out this list as a bittersweet triumph. Celine Song’s gentle film charts the relationship of two people as they meet throughout their lives. Full of tender romance, bring some tissues for this affecting film.
Jacqueline Ristola does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Claremont Graduate University Announces Winners of Kingsley & Kate Tufts Poetry Awards

Retrieved on: 
Monday, February 12, 2024

Claremont, California, Feb. 12, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Feb 12, 2024-- Claremont Graduate University is proud to announce the winners of the 30th anniversary of the prestigious Kingsley & Kate Tufts Poetry Awards.

Key Points: 
  • Claremont, California, Feb. 12, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Feb 12, 2024-- Claremont Graduate University is proud to announce the winners of the 30th anniversary of the prestigious Kingsley & Kate Tufts Poetry Awards.
  • The 30th anniversary of the Kinglsey & Kate Tufts Poetry Awards underscores Claremont Graduate University’s dedication to fostering and honoring the literary arts.
  • The awards stand as a beacon for emerging and established poets, contributing significantly to the vibrant tapestry of American poetry.
  • Divya Victor: Poet and associate professor at Michigan State University, author of “CURB,” and winner of the 2022 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.