Mary Neguse

Of Names and Numbers, Blossoming is a website of poetry that explores the connection and tension between what we consider human and what we consider machine. The poems collectively seek to draw these often juxtaposed ideas together, to consider the relationship between technology, especially sentient technology, and humans in a way that is not necessarily contrary. Some of the poems in Of Names and Numbers are of lived human experiences and emotions, of love, loneliness, and the qualities that we consider innately human. Others are more mechanical in nature, and employ repetition or disembodied voice to make the reader’s sense of body and place more abstract. Still, some are robotic and contain warmth, relating human qualities to a subject that is not necessarily so. Themes of growth and movement are portrayed in the poems as well as in moving images, allowing room for concepts of technology, machine, and humans to unfold or blossom into something wonderfully strange and constantly evolving.