Babbage's Dream (Sundress Publications, 2017)
Taking its title from Charles Babbage, the nineteenth-century mathematician, who designed but did not complete what would have been the first mechanical programmable computer, Babbage’s Dream weaves together not only Victorian and contemporary anxieties about the spectacle and threat of new technology, but also offers us lyric redefinitions of computer programming terms and first-person perspectives of literary and historical artificially intelligent others. "In stunningly elegant couplets, Neil Aitken transposes the dreams of machines and humans into musical, sonically deft lyrics that sing songs of creation, vision, possibility, futurity. These beautifully crafted poems—evoking the designs of nineteenth-century mathematician Charles Babbage, who conceptualized the first mechanical programmable computer—explore the tautologies between mathematics and song, science and lyric, the rational and the passionate, dystopia and hope. In the infinite tape loop of memory and imagination, Babbage’s Dream posits a Turing Test in which the reader circles both anxiously and gloriously through aspects of making, maker, and the made." —Lee Ann Roripaugh "In Neil Aitken’s exquisite poems, Charles Babbage, inventor and thinker comes to life in an array of stunning images. The poems spark and leap in exhilarating assemblages as we piece together the narrative behind the concept of the programmable computer but further beyond, Aitken invites us to ask questions about consciousness, thought, and who we are in our daily lives. The jolt of the past comes back as “the bit of code we’ve let loose in the dark” and the fractals return as a heart in mourning. This is a transfixing book on memory, the human mind, and the possibility of rebirth in unexpected but musical planes." —Oliver de la Paz "Through Aitken’s long lyrical lines and guided by narrative threads, I was pleased to make the acquaintance of the polymath Charles Babbage, his 19th century world and his language: the language of science and engineering, a language that at once halts and captivates. Come inside the Aitken’s Babbage’s Dream for new perceptions of the world." —Kimiko Hahn
The Lost Country of Sight (Anhinga Press, 2008). 2007 Philip Levine Prize winner
Revolving around the themes of exile and return, memory and forgetting, and the reconstruction of home through the written word, The Lost Country of Sight navigates a path through loss and separation that spans Canada, the United States, and Taiwan; the death of a father; and a life lived in the liminal space between cultures and languages.
"It’s difficult to believe that Neil Aitken’s The Lost Country of Sight is a first book, since there is mastery throughout the collection. His ear is finely tuned, and his capacity for lyricism seems almost boundless. What stands out everywhere in the poems is his imagery, which is not only visually precise but is also possessed of a pure depth. The poems never veer off into the sensational; they are built from pensiveness and quietude and an affection for the world. “Traveling Through the Prairies, I Think of My Father’s Voice” strikes me as a perfectly made poem, but poems of similar grace and power are to be found throughout the book. This is a debut to celebrate."
—C.G. Hanzlicek, 2007 Philip Levine Prize Final Judge
"The voice in these poems is that of a sighted, awake heart discovering its home in language and its homelessness in the world. Steeped in longing, the imagination here is concrete, vivid, sensuous, and ultimately erotic, even as it perceives that meaning and beauty are evanescent."
—Li-Young Lee
"Fueled by motion and emotion, Neil Aitken’s The Lost Country of Sight is literally and figuratively a moving collection. His winding roads and “ghost cars” move us over the landscapes of identity and personal history with stirring meditative grace. “There is a song at the beginning of every journey” Aitken tells us in one poem even as he says in another, “these are journeys we never take.” This poet is our both our wise, wide-eyed tour guide and our dazed, day-dreaming companion in The Lost Country of Sight. This is a rich, mature debut."
—Terrance Hayes
About the Artist
Neil Aitken is a Chinese-Scottish Canadian writer, translator, and librettist who is the author of two books of poetry, The Lost Country of Sight (Anhinga Press), which won the 2007 Philip Levine Prize, and most recently, Babbage’s Dream. He is the founding editor of Boxcar Poetry Review and his own poems have appeared in The Adroit Journal, American Literary Review, The Collagist, Crab Orchard Review, Ninth Letter, Southern Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He is the administrator of Have Book Will Travel, the co-director of De-Canon: A Visibility Project, and the host of the literary podcast series The Lit Fantastic.
A past Kundiman Poetry Fellow, Neil has coached other writers through AWP’s Writer to Writer program, the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild’s Mentorship program, and The Writers’ Union of Canada’s Mentorship Microgrant program. He served as the Virtual Writer-in-Residence for the Saskatchewan Writers Guild during Fall 2020 and worked remotely with rural writers throughout the province. Neil currently lives in Regina where he works as a creative writing coach and manuscript consultant for writers all over the US, Canada, and beyond. He recently served as the Regina Public Library’s Writer-in-Residence (2021-2022).
As a Chinese-English translator, Neil has worked with poet-translator Ming Di to translate The Book of Cranes: Selected Poems of Zang Di, as well as numerous translations which appear in New Cathay: Contemporary Chinese Poetry, 1990-2012. He received the DJS Translation Prize in 2011 and has served as a contributing editor and board member of Poetry East West. Neil presently works as a creative writing coach and freelance editor.
You can find him on YouTube creating content for Fantastic Descriptions (a deep dive into narrative description for roleplaying games) and The Hermit Poetry Series (a thrice-weekly reading of contemporary poetry). He also streams on Twitch as babbaginator where he plays The Long Dark and discusses poetry, fantasy roleplaying games, and the history of technology.
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Ethnic Origins
East Asian , Other
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Languages
English, Mandarin
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My Disciplines
Literature
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What I'm Creating
I write primarily poetry, but in recent years have also written lyric essays, opera libretto, interactive fiction games, and short fiction. I also translate contemporary Chinese poetry into English.