Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Twitter poetry

Would you call them poetweets? Anyway, I'm sure I'm not the first, but I've become interested in the idea of Twitter poetry. Poems that can fit inside 140 characters. Examples:
evrywhr:i c mmnts crl'd back like lips frm ancnt teeth;evrywhr:i C the bones,their shapes ntwined in2 the flowrs of gd's infnite spirogrph
That one's exactly 140 chars, which is cool. Here's another:
I wlk nr hom:flwrs&mud&proof of lives livd wth jy&srrw&othr namelss thngs;wrlds story a pudl;tiny mmnt a cvrnus sky;blu wth hrt's own relish
Twitter is what has come to be called a "microblogging" platform. A way of publishing very small messages to large numbers of people. You might not find the time to write a long article in a blog, but you might find the time to post an interesting link you found, or make a quick comment on a news article. I'm sure I'm not the first to think it's also a good medium for poetry. I like the creative limitation that 140 characters gives you. In exchange, twitter gives you a whole new medium for your poetry: simultaneously posted to people's cell phones, facebook and twitter feeds.... very 21st century. And, as a bonus to the reader, if you don't like my poetry, you only need to suffer through 140 characters of it at the most! Here's my twitter feed: http://twitter.com/fergusson. Follow me! If you have Twitter poetry of your own, let me know - I'll link to it here, and in my various feeds and profiles. Tweet, tweet! Update... Here is a list of some links to other posts on Twitter Poetry: Bird and Plane image is Machine, by Hambo. Creative Commons via Flickr. Snowflake image is Flake on Snow by circulating. Creative Commons via Flickr.