What would be a good poetry form for Twitter?

[Paulclem]

What do you reckon would be a suitable poetic fom for Twitter? Or do we need a new form.

One that was humourous would be good for satire. I tried limericks but I think they're a bit long. What would you suggest?

[MorpheusSandman]

Cinquains or Haikus, obviously. I think most of them would be under 144(?) characters.

[Paulclem]

Yes they would. I'd like a humorous format though in which to write amusing short poems about current affairs.

I had a quick go, and it looks like an 8 syllable, 4 line poem would fit the bill. I've tried a couple and the average character length is about 30. Is there a particular name for this type of form? Rhymes might help with the humour too.

Or perhaps we could come up with a suitable name for it - perhaps relating it to twitter.

[Delta40]

How about a little Twitty?

[tonywalt]

Micro poetry and Haikus are Extremely popular on Twitter. To be honest, there's tons of Contemporary Poetry on twitter. I'm surprised, but not shocked, that our Litnet twitter is so unfollowed - kind of puzzling.

[Paulclem]

Apart from Haikus, do you mean that tweets are written in poetic form or that tweets contain links to poetry? I follow a few sites with poems of the week etc.

Have you seen subscribers tweeting solely in rhyme?

[tonywalt]

I mean tweets of Haikus and micro poetry. I primarily, if not wholly, use twitter to market my writing (which, at this point, is contemporary poetry) so many of my followers/followed tweet 'short stuff' often. Lots of links as well.

[Delta40]

Micro poetry and Haikus are Extremely popular on Twitter. To be honest, there's tons of Contemporary Poetry on twitter. I'm surprised, but not shocked, that our Litnet twitter is so unfollowed - kind of puzzling.

we have a lit-net twitter?

[Paulclem]

I like twitty by the way.

[tonywalt]

I like twitty by the way.

Yea, I think we follow each other. I'm gobsmacked by the low follow rate. I know this site is mainly Classical Poetry and Literature (the primary reason I've migrated away from Litnet) but thought more people would follow. It's good fun.

[Paulclem]

Yea, I think we follow each other. I'm gobsmacked by the low follow rate. I know this site is mainly Classical Poetry and Literature (the primary reason I've migrated away from Litnet) but thought more people would follow. It's good fun.

It is good fun and the response can be instant. I like twitter.

[Scheherazade]

Jusr as a reminder, you can follow me for Forum news (and other rants):

@ScherLitNet

[JBI]

Chinese regulated verse - 8x5 or 8x7 or 4x5 or 4x7 - perfect format for twitter. But then again, Twitter is cheating in Chinese, since words, especially in classical Chinese, are 1 or 2 characters usually. You get 100 words as compared to the English 20 words. Still, Japanese forms work best for their brevity, though they too do not exactly function properly in English.

a Closed Couplet may fit though

[tonywalt]

Jusr as a reminder, you can follow me for Forum news (and other rants):

@ScherLitNet

Sent from my SK17i using Forum Runner

And also, perhaps my favourite reason, Scheherazade cannot suspend me; I can be mouthy as all hell.

[AuntShecky]

I'm not a "Tweeter" or whatever it's called, but when I first saw this thread, I thought: the form of the old Burma Shave signs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave) would be perfect."

Unfortunately, somebody already beat me to the idea:


Randall Munroe's webcomic
xkcd includes a strip in which one of the stick-figure characters is shown typing into a smartphone: "On Twitter feeds / An odd regression: / Ancient memes / Find new expression / Burma-Shave".


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave

[Paulclem]

Brilliant Auntie. I really like those.

http://burma-shave.org/jingles/1963/

I've just read the 1963 jingles - the year I was born. Excellent.

I tweeted this today:

Beloved of the Glitterati
are ascendant twitterati.
Outraged are the literati
at the lack of arty-farty.

but I reckon the Burma Shave artists won't feel too threatened.