SONG OF THE MONSTROUS GRID - John Shane - Part of an unpublished long-form spoken word drama THE WINGED DRUM - Why do kids enjoy so much this poem about the ending of human life on the Earth..?

EZRA POUND: 'ARTISTS ARE THE ANTENNAE OF THE RACE.' Is it possible that that I intuited in this poem, written long before the Internet arrived, a danger that wouldn't arise until decades later?

Feb 06, 2025

1×

0:00

-3:44

CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON above at the right hand side of the page to hear John Shane read his poem ‘SONG OF THE MONSTROUS GRID’

You can read the full text of the poem and John’s comments on it below.

———— WAKE UP CALL TO THE TECH OLIGARCHS..!!———

The AI Threats to Climate Change' Climate Action Against Disinformation's report highlights the risks that artificial intelligence poses to the climate crisis.

“AI companies spread hype that they might save the planet, but currently they are doing just the opposite,” said Michael Khoo, Climate Disinformation Program Director at Friends of the Earth.

“AI companies risk turbocharging climate disinformation, and their energy use is causing a dangerous increase to overall US consumption, with a corresponding increase of carbon emissions.”

You can read a summary of the report and find a link to a PDF of the full report at the end of this post.

EZRA POUND:

'Artists are the antennae of the race.' (Literary Essays)

Is it possible that in this poem that was written earlier than 1980 - before the arrival of the internet - my “artist’s antenna” as a poet intuited a danger to the planet and all who live on it that would only arise decades later as the possibility of AI empowered weapons acting independently of their human makers becomes a reality?

How do you teach ‘creativity’ anyway..?

And, if kids are naturally creative, how do you teach them the skills of the craft of writing without blocking their instincts..?

A good way to start seemed to be to read to the class a piece of writing that I’d written and then to explain how and why I’d written that particular piece.

So I proceeded with that process on the basis of trial and error, and it seemed to capture the attention of the young people I taught.

Then, if the class was excited by whatever I’d read, when I asked them to write something of their own on the same or a similar subject, I’d find that they were often inspired by my example to produce interesting work of their own.

Among the students I had to teach, there were many from difficult backgrounds who hated school and felt rejected by the educational system, and I’d use any. method I could think of to evoke a response from them that would get a discussion going between them.

Once those disadvantaged kids were enjoying themselves, they would forget they were at school, and anything seemed possible in the classroom, as they discovered that - when they set their imaginations free - they could be anyone and they could do anything in whatever they wrote either individually or together as a group with their classmates.

After starting with reading ‘crowd-pleaser’ poems, I found that I could, as my once-a-week classes progressed throughout the term, gradually introduce more difficult pieces that stretched the concentration and comprehension skills of the class.

And while teaching poetry and creative writing skills, I was also able to teach about the mind and introduce the class to basic mindfulness mediation skills.

I was among the first people to try that approach in the classroom in the UK.

Bear in mind also that, back in those days, the kind of Creative Writing courses that one can now find at schools and universities all over the world simply didn’t exist, so I was a pioneer in that, too.

It was because I was doing all this when I first met my teacher Chogyal Namkhai Norbu in 1978 that he gave me the affectionately mocking nickname ‘Shanespeare’ as a way to encourage me to let go of identifying so strongly with the self-image I had built up of myself as a poet, songwriter, and storyteller, which he saw could be an obstacle to my being able to go beyond the limits of my fascination with language and all the usual unquestioned mental and emotional baggage that one acquires as one grows up in societies based on dualistic materialism.

He encouraged me to use the act of writing to help me to develop insight into my true condition and loosen the bonds of ego-centred living and free my mind up so that I could relax into authentic being, whatever was arising in the moment.

Above is an article published in 1980 the local newspaper in Herefordshire, where I was living when I was appointed Creative Writing Assistant to West Midlands Arts, the regional office of the Arts Council Of Great Britain.

EZRA POUND:

‘Literature is news that stays news.' (The ABC of Reading)

When I was first invited to participate in the Arts Council of Great Britain’s ‘Writers In Schools’ scheme, I traveled around the country to teach children and young people of all ages all over the UK.

Later, after I had gained a lot of experience of teaching not only children and young people but also adults of all kinds in many different kinds of situations and venues, I was appointed Creative Writing Assistant to West Midlands Arts, the regional office of The Arts Council Of Great Britain.

As part of that assignment - as well as continuing to travel to teach all over the England - I taught Creative Writing to pupils of every age group and every cultural background at two large state Comprehensive schools in the West Midlands area.

While I was based at those two big schools two days a week, on the other three days my brief in my new post was also to travel around the whole West Midlands area to encourage the teaching Creative Writing at other schools alongside the official syllabus classes in English Language or Literature taught by the regular teachers.

I hope to write more about my adventures at those two schools in a subsequent post, but for now - because it speaks so strongly to things going on in the world that are currently in the news - I’m going to focus on the SONG OF THE MONSTROUS GRID, a poem that I used to read to all the classes I taught because I’d found that it would always produce a very strong positive reaction.

Kids of all ages just loved it..!!

And of course, I loved to see them react to it.

But I have to admit that I was also surprised - particularly at first - at seeing young people respond so positively to a piece about something so utterly negative - the destruction of the planet we live on and the ending of the human race…!!

I still wonder about the reasons for their response.

Could the reason for the positive reaction of children and young adults to the poem be because they felt a sense of psychological relief at finally finding a plain-spoken expression being given - in an ironically humorous way - to a deep fear that they were all subliminally experiencing without being fully aware that of the fear in the back of their minds..?

Could it be that bringing their fear to their attention - as they enjoyed a playful performance poem - was a first step in helping them come to terms with what they were afraid to look at, but needed to look at, as a first step in deciding how to live with the threat of climate catastrophe that we have all been facing for many years now about which we can see not enough is being done to mitigate the threat…?

Over the years, I’ve written and published quite a few poems about to the climate crisis.

But I’ve never published the SONG OF THE MONSTROUS GRIP before, partly because it became part of a still unfinished long-form performance piece that I have been working on whenever for sometime - THE WINGED DRUM.

Over the years that I’ve been working on that long-form piece, I haven’t wanted to publish any of the parts of it until the project is completely finished and ready to perform, when I imagined I would publish all the parts of the finished piece together..

But now I find it impossible not to want to publish some sort of response to the hubristic behaviour of the AI companies and the arrogance of the billionaire ‘tech titans’ who are so keen to promote the for-profit development of AI ‘at all costs’ without first doing the essential due diligence of carrying out research into the many dangers the technology presents.

So here is the SONG OF THE MONSTROUS GRID - in both its written and spoken-word forms - the first part of my long-form project THE WINGED DRUM to be published.

I invite you to feel free to share the poem in any way you like to promote awareness and action on the climate crisis, and, if you do, all I ask is that you are kind enough to include a credit for my publication here on Substack. Thanks…!!

Front page of the UK national newspaper ‘The Daily Star’ Tuesday, 11 February, 2025.

Share The Way Of The Poet - John Shane

Below you can read about the 2024 report from Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) explores the risks that AI poses to the climate crisis

Balancing Act - Renewable Energy Integration and Power Grid Stability (symbol image, credit CLOU)

The AI Threats to Climate Change

7 March 2024

This new report from the Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) explores the risks that AI poses to the climate crisis.

“AI companies spread hype that they might save the planet, but currently they are doing just the opposite,” said Michael Khoo, Climate Disinformation Program Director at Friends of the Earth. “AI companies risk turbocharging climate disinformation, and their energy use is causing a dangerous increase to overall US consumption, with a corresponding increase of carbon emissions.”

“We are already seeing how generative AI is being weaponized to spin up climate disinformation or copy legitimate news sites to siphon off advertising revenue”, said Sarah Kay Wiley, Director of Policy at Check My Ads, “Adtech companies are woefully unprepared to deal with Generative AI and the opaque nature of the digital advertising industry means advertisers are not in control of where their ad dollars are going. Regulation is needed to help build transparency and accountability to ensure advertisers are able to decide whether to support AI generated content.”

“The evidence is clear: the production of AI is having a negative impact on the climate. The responsibility to address those impacts lie with the companies producing and releasing AI at a breakneck speed,” said Nicole Sugerman, Campaign Manager at Kairos Fellowship. “We must not allow another ‘move fast and break things’ era in tech; we’ve already seen how the rapid, unregulated growth of social media platforms led to previously unimaginable levels of online and offline harm and violence. We can get it right this time, with regulation of AI companies that can protect our futures and the future of the planet.”

“The climate emergency cannot be confronted while online public & political discourse is polluted by fear, hate, confusion and conspiracy,” said Oliver Hayes, Head of Policy & Campaigns at Global Action Plan. “AI is supercharging these problems, making misinformation cheaper and easier to produce and share than ever before. In a year when 2 billion people are heading to the polls, this represents an existential threat to climate action. We should stop looking at AI through the “benefit-only” analysis and recognise that, in order to secure robust democracies and equitable climate policy, we must rein in big tech and regulate AI.”

“The skyrocketing use of electricity and water, combined with its ability to rapidly spread disinformation, makes AI one of the greatest emerging climate threat-multipliers, said Charlie Cray, Senior Strategist at Greenpeace USA, “Governments and companies must stop pretending that increasing equipment efficiencies and directing AI tools towards weather disaster responses are enough to mitigate AI’s contribution to the climate emergency.”

Key Findings:

AI systems are increasingly demanding vast amounts of energy and water. On an industry-wide level, the International Energy Agency estimates the energy use from data centers that power AI will double in just the next two years, consuming as much energy as Japan. These data centers and AI systems also use large amounts of water in operations and are often located in areas that already face water shortages.
AI will help spread climate disinformation. The World Economic Forum in 2024 identified AI-generated mis- and disinformation as the world’s greatest threat (followed by climate change), saying “large-scale AI models have already enabled an explosion in falsified information.” AI will allow climate deniers to more easily, cheaply and rapidly develop persuasive false content and spread it across social media, targeted advertising and search engines.

Based on the findings, CAAD has three priority recommendations for tech companies and regulators to adopt and implement, including:

Transparency: Companies must report on energy use and emissions produced, assess environmental and social justice implications of developing their technologies and explain how their AI models produce information.
Safety: Companies must demonstrate that their products are safe for people and the environment and explain how their algorithms are safeguarded against discrimination, bias and disinformation. Governments must develop common standards on AI safety reporting and work with the International Panel on Climate Change to develop coordinated global oversight.
Accountability: Governments should enforce rules on investigating and mitigating the climate impacts of AI with clear, strong penalties for noncompliance. Companies and their executives must be held accountable for any harms that occur as a result of their products.

You can read the report in full at this link - here.