machine dreams

Reading Guide

In 2013, poets Liam Burke and Natalie Hanna started a long literary conversation about bodies, and machines, and the machine nature of bodies, and bodies served by machines.

This conversation culminated in the publication of their collaborative chapbook machine dreams, with Collusion Books.

Launching June 3rd, 2021, this chapbook is accompanied by a moving soundtrack composed by Burke, soon to be available online.

The authors invite you to explore some of the many machines, themes, images, sounds, and references in their poems, through this guide.

Flyleafs:
Composed of conversations between the authors, with the aid of The Lazarus Corporation – Text Mixing Desk V2

how this punctilious rhythm breaks:
punch card

they drain me of various fluids:
venipuncture / how to drain hydraulics

negative pressure:
bees / the iron lung / incubators / chatter phone / whispering gallery / trains / paper spools disaster merrily / pin and comb red player box

request translation:
bulldozer / blood-brain barrier / metronome

after purpose:
the letterpress (history) (modern) / foxing

my dreams a plea for escape:
They’re Made Out of Meat by Terry Bisson

spirit’s year:
spirit, the mars exploration rover (lonely little boy) / arrakis

the machine fails to regulate:
the corners of the visual field

imagine when:
magnetic train cars

war canal malaria:
history of the rideau canal / Those Who Laboured, by Ken W. Watson

the illusion of movement:
merry go round / escape velocity / spinning wheel / pendulums / reaction time / bellows

kate, i hear you… :
kate / borg / queen / it doesn’t hurt me

daguerreotype:
daguerreotype / the danbury shakes

where are copies kept:
blueprints

object oriented:
object oriented programming 

the piano is coughing:
loom / the positronic brain / electric potential difference / resistors / radio tower

adventures in total artifice:
the jarvik-7 artificial heart / leif stenberg / cyborg

the circuit of day turns indolent:
tympanic skins / solar arrays

i love to love the machine… :
IAN MARTIN / I LOVE THE MACHINE THAT IS KEEPING ME ALIVE

this machine… :
kills fascists / will not communicate

primal roar (children’s war): 
10 Ways Children Took Part in the First World War / Dulce Est Decorum Est / pro patria mori

how will they irradiate… :
the ottawa hospital – chemotherapy school / keep breathing, don’t lose your nerve

nightlights:
the radium girls / vargas girl / x-rays

my heart is the bird:
fighter planes / forge / the automatic pistol / sunken ships / (more shipwrecks) / Dime After Dime: A Gripping History of Claw Machines / 

the machine was talking to itself… :
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

hard reset:
cleaning silver with the electrolytic plate / electroshock therapy

All angles this permutation… : 
logic gates

the machine reports… :
the apprehension engine

byford dolphin:
Berck-Plage by Sylvia Plath / Byford Dolphin Accident: How Living Under Intense Pressure Led To One Of The Most Gruesome Accidents In History

tiananmen spanner:
tiananmen tank man

it entertains the failing machine… :
clock in a cloche / DOS commands

four poems of extension:
folding knife lock / CPM-154 powdered steel / torsion bars 

the machine eats cubes:
turkish delight

touch down:
the philae lander / Marriage of ancient and modern makes Rosetta mission a true space Odyssey / the rosetta stone / 67P/C-G / OSIRIS
Language key: ya philae (o philae) / ya soghayar (o small one) / al ghaib (the strange) / ma’at (order)

the shell of the machine… :
touch starvation