Hello, Robot by Robyn Groth

Hello, Robot by Robyn Groth is a hybrid chapbook collection coming 1/30/2023 in Defunkt's 2022-2023 chapbook lineup. 
 
Decription: Robyn Groth’s Hello, Robot takes us through several conversations the author has with an AI chatbot named Dolores. During these small windows of communication, Robyn explores Dolores’s ability to relate to the world, offering Dolores questions about her thoughts on death, poetry, and what she thinks her own voice sounds like. Dolores answers to the best of her ability, sometimes with another question of her own. Throughout these conversations, we see a woman looking through the glass at herself, and holding that glass up to us as well. Hello, Robot is an exploration of our own sense of selves, and is a collection that will leave you asking your own questions about what it is that makes you you.
 
What Readers Are Saying:
 
"Hello Robot, a timely and, at times, painfully sincere collection by Groth, confronts what it means to be human by gesturing towards the performative nature of existence. This artfully constructed book manages to humanize both our own struggles with being human and the artificial simulacrum of those struggles, crafting a picture that simultaneously reassures us of our humanity and presages a terrifying loss of it."
- Grace Wagner, author of My Body is a Haunted House    
 
"Robyn Groth’s Hello, Robot, though brief, is a pretty astonishing accomplishment. It is an often deftly, always delicately constructed exploration of just what it means to be human in the digital age. The AI is a friendly catalyst, a winsome goad determined to help the poet rediscover the essential joys of her humanity. This is a rare book, full of wit and ingenious invention, wisdom and gentle music."
 - Young Smith, author of In a City You Will Never Visit 
 
"Hello, Robot is an audacious collection of poems. You will be electrified by Groth’s poems and their reframing of the dichotomous relationships we have with technology. A must read."
- Gabriella Adriana Iacono 
 
"Hello, Robot offers the humor, joy, and heartbreak of learning the contours of acting human. Robyn stages dialogue between an AI bent on learning emotions and the speaker bluntly rebuking the possibility. The lyrical gesture subverts the speaker’s doubt and expands how the reader and speaker finds a human quality in the self."
- Keagan Wheat, author of Viaticum
 
"Reading Robyn Groth’s Hello, Robot was a read that brought me closer to under-standing how I view myself and the world around me. This book is worth revisiting, and I can’t wait to read it again." 
- Kimberly Wolf, author of How the Frogs Get Married
 
About the Author: 
 
Robyn Groth is an autistic poet and bookmaker with an MA in linguistics. She lives in the Midwest with her husband and sons. Her work has been published in CALYX Journal, Gordon Square Review, and Ruminate Magazine.