Do You Remember Being Born?

By Sean Michaels,

Book cover of Do You Remember Being Born?

Book description

Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Sean Michaels writes a moving, innovative novel about an ageing poet laureate who "sells out" by agreeing to collaborate with a Big Tech company's poetry AI.

Do You Remember Being Born? is sensitively narrated by the ageing, world-renowned poet Marian Ffarmer. Marian's pristine life of the…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Do You Remember Being Born? as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Each Sean Michaels novel is a wondrous creature unto itself. In Do You Remember Being Born?, an eminent poet agrees—for a fee large enough to help her son buy a house—to write a lengthy poem in collaboration with a generative AI. In an innovative act of living the theme, the novel itself is written in (very limited, carefully managed) collaboration with a customized poetry-generation AI, which produces the fictional AI’s contributions and dialogue and discrete bits of the narrative. (In an admirable act of authorial transparency, these are highlighted in the text.)
It works splendidly. Not necessarily because of the…

A compelling tale about an elderly poet who is tasked with writing a collaborative poem with the world's best artificial intelligence computer. The gentle style and the contrast between technology and tradition made it a treat to read.

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