Could AI help more people discover the power of poetry?

William Sieghart and Mark Eaves introduced Ode, an AI-assisted companion that matches real poems with people’s feelings. Their Future Forum conversation asked what happens when new technology opens the door to an old art form.

Poetry can be difficult to approach if you have been taught to see it as something complicated, academic or simply not for you.

William Sieghart has spent decades challenging that assumption through National Poetry Day and his Poetry Pharmacy books. At Future Forum, he joined Gravity Road Founder Mark Eaves to explain how that work has inspired a new experience called ODE.

A poem for how you’re feeling

Ode asks users about their mood and suggests a poem that might resonate. Its conversational element uses AI, but the poems themselves are written by poets and read by human voices.

That distinction was central to the session. The goal is not to generate substitute literature. It is to make an existing body of creative work more discoverable and personally relevant.

A short introductory film featuring Stephen Fry explained how the experience brings Sieghart’s approach to recommending poetry into a digital format.

The human story comes first

Sieghart traced his own relationship with poetry to childhood, when memorising and reading poems offered a form of comfort. Later, he began sending poems to friends going through difficult experiences.

Those moments became the foundation of The Poetry Pharmacy: the idea that someone who doesn’t normally seek out poetry might connect with it when it speaks directly to something happening in their life.

The technology gives that approach another route to reach people. The personal meaning remains in the writing and the reader’s response.

What should AI actually do?

The conversation offered an alternative to the assumption that AI’s role in creative industries is inevitably to produce more content.

Here, AI becomes a guide – helping people find something made by another human being, at a time when it might matter to them.

It also raises questions about care and expectation. A poem can offer recognition, consolation or a moment of reflection, but it is not a replacement for professional support when someone needs it.

At Future Forum, Ode provided a small but compelling example of a bigger possibility: new technology might make us more human when it helps us reconnect with the culture, emotion and language we already share.