COLD - a Poem by One Poet and Many More

Like many authors I have been playing around with AI. It both excites me and frightens me. So I did this AI experiment with an original poem written by me called COLD.

Then I turned to AI. and I curated this anthology.

Poetry is a realm where language, emotion, and thought collide, each poet bringing a unique lens through which we see and understand the world. I embarked on this exploration of translation, inviting the voices of many poets to converge around a single poem, not only to honor the legacy they’ve each left us but to experience how distinct styles and eras might reshape a singular idea. Each poet brings with them a way of seeing, a different rhythm and shade of light, refracting the poem through a prism of voices that echoes the diversity of human expression.

In this anthology, you will find translations inspired by:

Geoffrey Chaucer, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Emily Dickinson, James Joyce, Patrick Kavanagh, Edgar Allan Poe, Ernest Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Maya Angelou, Robert Frost, William Shakespeare, Franz Kafka, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Wordsworth, Homer, T. S. Eliot, John Keats, William Butler Yeats, Hunter S. Thompson, Walt Whitman, William Blake, Eavan Boland, Spike Milligan, Samuel Beckett, Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Omar Khayyam.

Each interpretation is an experiment—a passage through time, culture, and tone. In embracing these voices, I hope to unearth new meanings in the familiar, a tribute to the richness of poetry’s varied forms and an invitation to consider how timeless words can shift, resonate, and reinvent themselves through different eyes.

I hope you like my experiment - I loved doing this. Please support my writing and exploration. A digital version of my book is available now. A paperback is also available.

Here is the original poem Cold:

Cold by Jillian Godsil

Robinson Crusoe I am not. The abandoned island I live on is just above Arklow harbour

– it’s a floating pontoon with a timber frame, no window, no door, three sides with an opening facing the sea.

Cold

The opening facing the sea means only gulls look in, surprised,

to see a grizzled old man hugging a thin blanket, trying to keep warm.

Cold

In the morning I am dragged from my stupor by the cold morning light, more often than not accompanied by rain.

This is winter and winter in Arklow lasts all year, or at least until July.

Cold.

I stand up, stiffly and shed my thin blanket, like skin off a snake.

Walking to the edge I greet the sea gulls, surprised, and open my flies to aim a steaming arc of water into the sea.

Cold

I wouldn’t give the steam off my piss to anyone, cos nobody would give it to me.

I return my impotent worm and close my flies. Kavanagh knew all about that alright.

Cold

Returning to my corner I have a choice. Curl up under the threadbare blanket or make out for town. The urge to defecate forces my hand and I stand up again, unsteadily. I have before bobbed the arse over the edge but the floating accusers cannot all be blamed on the sewage works. Anyway, Maise’s café will be open and there is tea available there.

Warm

I fold my blanket, like I was taught, and close my coat, slept in, and start out. The steel light of early morning, shards the seawater, cupping little curls of white. Head down, I hasten to the main street and steal in, before the regulars. I stink too much for polite society.

Stench

Deposit left, tea drank, bones a little warmer, I nod thanks to Maise and leave, before I create a bubble of old man stench in the corner by the door. I look back and she is already wiping down the table and seat.

Stench

Better to be in the semi-open air, facing the surprised seagulls whirling overhead, where I can think for the day.

Cold

If every man should be his wife and the honeymoon is in the hand, then I have no need of anything else. Now I don’t even have need of the hand, drop the hand, drop it. Only the gulls talk to me now, surprised, but even they would suck the eyeballs from my head if let.

Juicy.

And here is AI’s version as a haiku poem:

Cold wind on the dock,
Gulls glance at a threadbare soul—
Sea whispers alone.

Rain taps at dawn’s light,
Old bones rise from ragged dreams—
Gulls look, cold, surprised.

Tea warms brittle hands,
Steam fades with a nod, unseen—
The stench stays behind.

Waves curl in the grey,
Gulls circle, waiting for scraps—
Eyes, juicy, they dream.

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