“Ancient Algorithms” takes the inherent challenges of translation and, rather than treating them as obstacles to be surmounted, uses them as opportunities for play in the space of literature and language. Katrine Øgaard Jensen takes handful of poems by Ursula Andkjær Olsen, translates them, mistranslates them, subjects them to complicated rewriting policies, gives them to other poets to create permutations and even runs them through a few available technologies to create a series of new works that are often striking, occasionally inscrutable and always interesting. And fun. Lots of fun.
I’ll say it again, because far too many readers come to believe the opposite is true: Experimental literature is fun. It is playful. It is goofy. The distance between the exercises and experiments of Dada, surrealism, Ouilipo and Jensen’s permutations in “Ancient Algorithms” and silly party games is pretty slim. Experimental literature is about expressing yourself and exploring intellectual, emotional, social, cultural and linguistic spaces without fear. Experimental literature is trying to get your adult brain back into a space where it can run around with maniacal joy like you did when you were a child. Experimental literature finds ways to remind us that even though there’s usually only one name on the cover of a book, creation is always communal. Whether you interact directly with friends and compatriots or draw from the collective creation of your culture, someone else always contributes to your creativity.
As a work rooted in translation, “Ancient Algorithms” inherently centers that community of literature, but Jensen pushes further. She passes permutations back and forth with other poets such as CAConrad, Aditi Machado, Paul Cunningham and even Olsen herself. They establish complex sets of rules. They develop esoteric rituals. They converse through their permutations. They critique through their permutations. They play with the poems and with each other. As Baba Badji writes in one of the “rules” he established in response to the poem: “Luxury is Culture and Nature”: “When in mistranslation the act of being unfaithful inspires creativity.”
The poem Badji wrote with those rules leads to my favorite line in the collection, from “Luxury is Non-Artificial Culture and Nature” by Jensen. “I long for life to re-real itself to me,/in good faith and with excessive force.” To me the tension between “good faith” and “excessive force” in service to the idea of “re-realling” life describes the most powerful and expressive works of art and literature. Jensen may be the author of that line, but it does not exist without Olsen’s original poem and Badji’s iteration. Creation is always collective. To me at least, that line alone validates all the permutations.
I do wish they hadn’t used AI in their experiments. “Ancient Algorithms” was published in 2025, which means the manuscript was likely finished in 2024 or perhaps even 2023, before we realized how much was being stolen, before the devastating ecological impacts were widely known, before tech companies started making existing products worse by cramming artificial intelligence into everything, before deskilling, before chatbot-enabled suicide, before the flood of abusive images, before the slop and before the death-drive of data centers became one of the defining political issues of the year. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of AI is that it didn’t have to be this way.
Those same experimental movements that played games and centered collaboration also explored what art can be produced when human intention is displaced. Duchamp’s readymades, the aleatory writing of Dada and Oulipian forms all wonder what art becomes when artists give up some of their control. We have seen a couple of examples of this alternative relationship to large language models and other AI programs, “Ancient Algorithms” being one, “American Abductions” by Mauro Javier Cardenas being another, but now I think that ship has sailed. At least for now, while these particular people and companies are in charge of it, there is no ethical use for generative AI.
The work using generative AI image tools doesn’t just stick the images in the text, but rather passes them through human creativity as Jensen creates poems by describing the generated images. So, as with those 20th century movements, human agency is displaced only temporarily. This might be a core component to the misunderstanding of experimental art: From “my kid could draw that” to “I just don’t get it,” viewers and readers don’t understand that decisions of the artist are creative acts in and of themselves. The urinal wasn’t art until Duchamp extracted it from its original space and moved it into an artistic one. The urinal itself isn’t the work of art, Duchamp’s decision to call it art is. A chance poem isn’t a poem if the poet doesn’t publish the results. A paint swatch produced by a company is not art, because a person did not intentionally create it to be art; the painting of a single color is, because a person created it intentionally to be art. There always needs to be a human intending a work of art, being the reason for creation, being the source.
This book also looks outward, inviting you to explore further, not just the works of featured poet Olsen (whose Third-Millennium I can also recommend), but the other collaborators as well. Enough of the contributors’ individual voices shine through that I’m sure many readers will travel directly from “Ancient Algorithms” to the works of one or more of its authors.
There are many entrance points for “Ancient Algorithms.” As I’ve noted, fans of experimental literature will see this collection as part of a long conversation on what art means and how art can be created. Translation nerds will be able to dig into the mechanics and philosophies surrounding the art of bringing literature from one language into another. Readers could also just engage with the individual poems; deconstructing their images, interrogating their mechanics, appreciating their beauty. And, of course, one could create their own permutations, starting from any point in the collection, borrowing rules or creating one’s own. “Ancient Algorithms” is an invitation as much as it is a poetry collection.
Ultimately, “Ancient Algorithms” makes explicit processes that are so mundane as to become invisible. Translation, influence, creation. Really, this is the fundamental creative process; we take in the work of others, subject it to a process of our own making and (hopefully) create something that becomes the starting point for someone else.
A version of this story appeared originally on the Porter Square Review of Books. Buy “Ancient Algorithms” from Porter Square Books.
