Revisited: "Reading Robot Poetry!"
BCNM was lucky to have alum Margaret Rhee return to UC Berkeley to read from her latest collection Radioheart: Or How Robots Fall Out of Love (Finishing Line Press, 2016) on December 5th.
Margaret first offered a talk situating the creative work in the context of her academic scholarship on representation and identity of Asian Americans. She argued that Asian Americans have been automatized and treated like “robots” by the media in America, while robots have been portrayed in media in the same terms as immigrants. Further explorations of robots, Margaret suggested, provide an interesting point of entry into investigating what it means to be human as a result. Creative explorations in particular offer the opportunity through affect to dismantle the binary relationships often at work in these discussions.
Margaret then read several poems from her collection and invited Ken Goldberg, BCNM and EECS professor and mentor from her time at UCB, to read as well. It was a real treat to engage with Margaret’s work again and to celebrate her continued success! Check out the photos below!
