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Dear Poets and Keepers of the Flame,
As PoetrySoup opens the floor to dialogue on AI-generated poetry, I feel a deep inner call to speak — not from trend, but from truth.
Can a machine mourn? Can it taste exile, love, or the smoke of a war-torn village? Can it carry a mother's scream buried beneath rubble?
When I penned Where Peace Bleeds Slowly, it wasn't crafted from patterns — it rose from silence, diplomacy, bloodshed, and human cost. It was born in the ache of witnessing the cruelty of our age, and the frail hope that peace might still be carved from sorrow.
AI might generate clever lines, even beauty. But poetry — real poetry — is not only crafted; it is lived.
AI does not carry trauma. It doesn't remember its ancestors. It doesn't bleed. It cannot pray.
Let AI remain a tool — useful, perhaps — but never the voice of our human condition. It must never replace the soul that suffers, dreams, or stands between empires and innocence with only a pen in hand.
Let poets remain sacred witnesses.
Let our voices, born from pain, joy, and spirit, carry forward what machines can only echo — never feel.
In reverence and resistance,
Chanda Katonga
Poet, Witness, Dreamer
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