Lillian-Yvonne Bertram is an African American writer, poet, artist, and educator who works at the intersection of computation, AI, race, and gender. They are the author of Travesty Generator (Noemi Press), a book of computational poetry that received the Poetry Society of America’s 2020 Anna Rabinowitz prize for interdisciplinary work and longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Poetry. They are the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship. Their other poetry books include How Narrow My Escapes (DIAGRAM/New Michigan), Personal Science (Tupelo Press), a slice from the cake made of air (Red Hen Press), and But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise (Red Hen Press). Their fifth book, Negative Money, is available now. They direct the MFA in creative writing program at the University of Maryland. Their new chapbook, written with AI, is called A Black Story May Contain Sensitive Content and won the 2023 Diagram/New Michigan chapbook contest.

Artist Statement link

Why is the work that the New Frameworks project is working to preserve important to you?

For me it represents a particular moment in my writing with computation, so there is sentimental value in that regard. It is also important to me because it serves, I hope, to bring and elevate Gwendolyn Brooks’s poetry into the digital realm and encourage new ways of interacting with her work.

What are the key ideas, issues, struggles, goals within your work?

In general: I would like my work with computational methods to illuminate the ways computational determinism and codes have always been a feature of structured anti-Blackness and oppression of marginalized people. Alongside that, I grapple with what most artists and writers grapple with: how to keep evolving and growing in one’s artistic practice; to create new work that is stimulating for me to make and for a reader to read. I always struggle with the limits of language to convey lived experience, particularly the nuances that exist in nonlinear ways at the intersections of race, gender, and class.

Who is your audience?

I do not know!

Who are your biggest artistic influences?

My influences are always under development, but as pertains to this project one of my major literary influences is Gwendolyn Brooks.

Preservation Sketch link

Read how we preserved Lillian-Yvonne Bertram’s work, Forever Gwen Brooks.