Poem on Stride's Algorithmic Prayers: ‘Pumpkin McPumpkin Face’

Rupert Loydell invited a number of writers to submit a poem or prose poem or short text for publication in Stride magazine, online: Stride magazine, responding to this sculpture by Diemut Strebe, ‘The Prayer’.

It is an eternal generative AI Prayer Machine! (It shows how AI can be used creatively and originally, instead of programming it to write substitute human novels or visualise Trump as a Superhero, or other banalities.)  

 

More information at: https://theprayer.diemutstrebe.com/. There are videos of the sculpture at work and they are definitely worth looking at. In fact, you need to see it at work to see what the writers are responding to. Here's a video of one of its chanting parts:

There are various responses so far, including Rupert’s own, Algorithmic Prayers: Religious belief is a small installation | Stride magazine, Patricia Farrell’s  Algorithmic Prayers: The apparatus as designed | Stride magazine, and Ian Seed’s Algorithmic Prayers: the breath that has been | Stride magazine. They are being posted in March and April 2025. 

Now it’s my turn, and my poem may be read at Algorithmic Prayers: deliver us | Stride magazine. Here's a bit of it, read by me, with effaced FACE effect: 

 

This text, ‘Pumpkin McPumpkin Face’ I describe as ‘responding to The Prayer by Diemut Strebe: featuring some words and phrases banned by the Trump team and its algorithm.’ Here’s the first line: ‘Orange Pumpkin, deliver us from Activism McActivism Face.’

I like Rupert's invitations to participate in special features on Stride, or sometimes in pamphlet form, like this one: Pages: Nerve Damage ed Rupert Loydell now out (responses to Witkin).