I recently asked an AI a rather innocent question.

"Would 8,421 musical tracks count as a large collection?"

I asked because I grew up in the age of vinyl records and cassette tapes. Back then, collections occupied shelves, spare bedrooms and, in the more advanced stages of the condition, marriages.

The AI replied that 8,421 records would require around 120 feet of shelving and weigh over two tons.

Two tons.

This was oddly comforting.

It means that, had I attempted to build V2Melody thirty years ago, the principal obstacle would not have been copyright, technology or finding enough poems.

It would have been reinforcing the floor.

The wonderful thing about digital collections is that they have quietly removed the need to explain to visitors why every available wall in the house is occupied by obscure recordings of forgotten poets.

Instead, all 8,421 tracks now sit on a small server that occupies rather less space than the average paperback.

Growing up in the LP era, I never imagined such a thing.

A record collection was something you built slowly. You bought one album because you could finally afford it, then played it until every tiny click and crackle became part of the performance. You knew the sleeve notes almost by heart because there was nothing else to do while listening.

A collection of a hundred LPs suggested commitment.

Five hundred suggested obsession.

A thousand probably meant your friends had stopped asking if you wanted to go out because they already knew the answer.

Eight thousand four hundred and twenty-one?

That would have required either a stately home or very understanding neighbours.

Yet here we are.

I suspect many of us have quietly become custodians of collections that would once have astonished us. Thousands of photographs. Thousands of books. Thousands of songs. We carry libraries in our pockets without giving them a second thought.

Perhaps abundance is why individual works are now so easily overlooked.

When every piece of music ever recorded appears to be only a click away, there is a temptation to keep clicking instead of listening.

V2Melody has accidentally become a rather large collection.

That was never really the point.

The point has always been the next poem.

There are now 8,421 musical interpretations on the site, but each one began in exactly the same way: a single poet, a single poem and the thought, "I wonder what this might sound like."

People occasionally ask me whether I'll ever finish.

The answer is no.

Poetry has been accumulating for thousands of years. I started rather late.

Besides, gardeners do not stop planting because the garden already contains many flowers.

They simply notice another empty corner and think, "That would look rather nice with something growing there."

Apparently I do exactly the same thing with poems.

Fortunately, they don't weigh two tons.