Autofocus, 2023

from the publisher: “Since 2020, Tyler Gillespie has spent a lot of time online and in other landscapes devoid of humans IRL. While undergoing quarantine with his grandmother in Florida, he began expanding his writing practice with new forms of media expression, going as far as recording snippets of a comedy album and creating a pop diva robot persona through text-to-talk technology. Although he eventually abandoned these projects, traces of them can be found in the nature machine!

Throughout this collection, Gillespie merges poetic forms with interstitial moments of sound and visual technologies to playfully theorize the now and to seriously contemplate the future. With dexterity, he threads ideas on cybernetics, pop music, the environment, desire, and recovery to examine how technology has transformed our natures. But ultimately, full of warmth and wit, this book reminds us why, despite everything, we're still not-yet-machines.”

PRAISE FOR the nature machine!

"Tyler Gillespie is a smart and hilarious poet. His poems know what it's like to have fun, and are as entertaining when they're goofing around with Britney Spears as with Ferdinand de Saussure. Whether he's riffing on Sex and the City and or discussing Karl Marx, his book will move you to laugh and to think--about the moon, about the Bible, about exclamation marks, about almost everything!"

—KATHLEEN ROONEY, author of Where Are the Snows

“the nature machine! has an urgency, a momentum, as it charts the loss of addiction, relationships, and the health of our planet. These are smart poems written with the kind of directness all of us crave. Interfused with pop icons, Gillespie takes on tough topics with cleverness and care as we get a full picture of the mechanisms of nature. Reading these poems, we get to know more about the poet, ourselves, and the world around us.”

—STEVEN REIGNS, author of A Quilt for David

“If ‘Leave Britney Alone!’ was a Millennial mantra, Gillespie has tapped into it the aesthetic axis where effervescent pop culture hides something razor-sharp and self-aware in its shadow. These poems are haunted by the polestar of Spears herself, yes, but also interlaced with Lisa Simpson beside Saussure, Immanuel Kant next to Tyra Banks. The juxtaposition of high culture beside low traverses the disposability of Cara Cunningham's South—and by extension—the trash-contaminated planet itself. Through plastic-gut whales and trailer parks, mobile apps and gay dive bars, Gillespie journeys us to the final landfill—one that is adorned with all the alluring and putrid debris of capitalist consumption.”
—JD SCOTT, author of Mask for Mask