Poetweet: a new art form?

Published on October 19, 2012

The Poetry Round

I’m some­what new to the world of twit­ter and one of the things I find most dif­fi­cult to deal with is the hor­ri­ble gram­mar and ‘txt spk wrds’. I like vow­els and their ab­sence of­fends me. My ex­pe­ri­ence in the twit­ter­sphere had pre­pared me for the mas­sacre of the Eng­lish lan­guage in any at­tempt to squeeze po­etry into tweets.

A de­moc­ra­ti­sa­tion of po­etry

How­ever, po­et­weets are a dif­fer­ent form with a dif­fer­ent lan­guage. Just as telegrams STOP and Shake­spearean son­nets de­mand iambic pen­tame­ter, twit­ter poems must fit a cer­tain set of rules. While haiku are lim­ited by their num­ber of syl­la­bles, tweets are cur­tailed by a strict char­ac­ter limit – ex­actly 140, in­clud­ing spaces and punc­tu­a­tion. Per­haps in haiku we find the po­et­weet’s clos­est cousin. In­deed, many tweet­ers do use the haiku, or the struc­turally sim­i­lar sen­ryu:

‏...​the dark­ness enters...​razing light, cast­ing shadows...​vanquish­ing the day...#haiku #haikuchal­lenge (@Lazy­Book­worm)

the tears / she never shed / mid­night rain #sen­ryu #po­etry (@ex­pat­in­CAT)

Poetry on twit­ter is as var­ied in style as it is in con­tent. Twit­ter is home to in­ter­na­tional po­etry com­mu­ni­ties, of­fer­ing ad­vice on and ap­pre­ci­a­tion of these po­et­weets. New tech­nol­ogy has al­lowed a new po­etic form to spread. While po­etry is often con­sid­ered elit­ist and far re­moved from the re­al­ity of every­day life, poems ap­pear on peo­ple’s twit­ter­feeds on a daily basis. This may be con­sid­ered a de­moc­ra­ti­sa­tion of po­etry. What we read here is not de­cided by some lofty lit­er­ary canon, but by our tastes. The poets are not solely long dead, eter­nally mid­dle-aged white men, but peo­ple who are liv­ing, ob­serv­ing life, find­ing in­spi­ra­tion, and tweet­ing about it. Per­haps we may com­pare the po­et­weet’s ad­vance to that of the novel after the emer­gence of the print­ing press. In both cases, new tech­nolo­gies have al­lowed for new forms of art to reach the masses.

And what do the masses think? Well, there are mixed opin­ions.

Some aren’t im­pressed. @K­wa­ha­rani­Ja­cobs’s re­sponse: ‘So you write poems all over fb and twit­ter? Omg you're soo deep!’ Yet oth­ers, such as @RightWingAn­gel, em­brace the op­por­tu­nity to share po­etry with strangers: ‘I told my Face­book friend that Twit­ter is a place where we share our poems with each other. She thinks that's won­der­ful. :)’ Then again, for some twit­ter is a dis­trac­tion from the cre­ative process, with @2­Much_­SOLE be­moan­ing that ‘If I didn't have a twit­ter.. I would have more poems.. Thanks twit­ter.’

Qual­ity, of course, varies im­mensely. While one may cringe at the copy­righted ef­forts of @the­bluechild (Po­etry: My­Space is music Twit­ter is cool In­sta­gram has pic­tures Face­book has fools Copy­right : the­bluechild), I freely ap­plaud @In­Po­et­weet, who is at­tempt­ing to tweet a poem a day for a year:

Queen of Sheba sought the wis­dom of Solomon Trav­eled con­fi­dently into his land Brought her pre­cious riches to bear To find his an­swer there (@In­Po­et­weet)

@Twit­ter­Po­etry pro­vides its fans with log-in de­tails, pro­vid­ing a con­stant flow of po­etry to its three thou­sand fol­low­ers:

For all the leaves that fell, there were lit­tle whis­pers. Wind sounds, re­gret, or last breaths. Mo­ments, rest­ing and wait­ing to wither (@Twit­ter­Po­etry)

Ad­mit­tedly it’s a pretty mixed bag, but there’s some­thing nice about being able to de­cide for one­self what one likes, with­out feel­ing pres­sure to ad­mire the clas­sics.

So, po­et­weet. It’s all a bit alien to me right now, but there’s a strong chance I’ll be­come a fan. Per­haps I’ll even give it a shot my­self.

We’d love to see your ef­forts at po­et­weet. Keep them within 140 char­ac­ters and send them in! Tweet us at @slen­der_means.

Im­ages: © Trevor Foun­tain