Galway Poet Cormac Culkeen on why poetry will survive AI at Leitrim's Written Word Festival

Artificial intelligence might be generating essays, novels and even dissertations — but Galway poet and editor Cormac Culkeen believes it will never replace the raw power of human writing.

“People can either write or they can’t. That’s the way I look at it,” says Culkeen. “Like a creative writing class can hone what’s already there. AI can’t do what people do with writing. It lacks a person’s perception. It lacks a person’s perspective. There’s a certain commonality to AI writing that you’ll spot straight away. It’s lacking something. It says things in a certain fixed way. It’s got no personality.”

While tech giants market AI as revolutionary, Culkeen argues it strips writing of originality. “What it actually is, it’s a standardisation of writing. That’s the thing people need to be concerned about. A lot of the tech boys would like you to buy their products, but they’re all the same, and the conceptual base of it is all the same as well.”

Culkeen predicts a cultural swing back toward authenticity.

“Human nature is like a pendulum. Everything pushes so far in a certain direction, eventually it swings back. People will flock to authentic writing, stuff that comes from a natural place. Poetry does what other writing can’t do. It can say things in a concise way. There’s always a contained emotion in poetry that technology can’t replicate. And what it brings to the reader is something the poet wants to bring — reaching across, taking somebody by the hand and going, ‘I know you’re there.’”

For Culkeen, poetry is “the engine of language” — vital for perception, empathy and connection. “Poetry should be more widely read than it is. It’s good for people’s heads, good for people’s hearts. It helps you live better, see things differently.”

A poet and writer from Galway, Culkeen returned to education as a mature student in 2018, graduating with a BA in Creative Writing in 2022 and an MA in Writing in 2023. His debut collection The Boy with the Radio was published by Beir Bua Press in 2022, and he is now working on a second collection and a novel, which was highly commended at the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair.

His poetry has appeared in Sonder Magazine, Causeway, Ropes Literary Journal, The Honest Ulsterman, Skylight 47, The Galway Review and more. In 2024, he was awarded a Galway City Council Creative Practitioner Bursary.

Culkeen also co-founded and edits Ragaire Literary Magazine, which publishes poetry, fiction and essays from Irish and international writers. Its next issue will launch at the PorterShed in Galway on 21 November, with submissions for Issue 5 opening in December.

For Culkeen, no algorithm can replicate the lived experience that fuels writing.

“No AI program’s going to be able to replicate that. It simply doesn’t have the life in it. You have to live, you have to be out in the world to write. A machine can’t do that. A machine can’t go, well, I’m going to go down to the shop today and I might bump into something interesting.”

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Cormac Culkeen signs book copies at Written Word Festival in Drumshanbo