Question of the Day: Can Poetry and Twitter Thrive Together?

Today is World Poetry Day. It’s also the sixth anniversary of the first ever tweet, sent by software developer Jack Dorsey. 

March 21 was established as World Poetry Day during the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s 30th session in 1999. The idea was to support linguistic diversity through poetic expression, promote teaching poetry and restore dialogue between poetry and other arts, according to UN.org. Observances of World Poetry Day happen in schools, bookstores, coffee shops and performance places across the globe and on the Internet.

While poetry’s been around, like, forever, Twitter, at the ripe old age of 6, is the epitome of the present.

Billing itself as “the fastest, simplest way to stay close to everything you care about,” Twitter is a real-time information network built around tweets, brief, 140-character bursts of information that include information in the form of headlines, opinions, pictures, videos and links. 

They appear to be opposing forces, Twitter and poetry, what with the immediacy of social media and the timelessness of the art of poetry. But that’s not necessarily the case, as was noted last year by Randy Kennedy in the New York Times.

“The confluence of these two events — both having to do with humanity’s deep and sometimes uncontrollable need to communicate — is occasioning a fresh outpouring of opinion about the future of Twitter as a vehicle for real creativity, not just for entertaining train wrecks like Charlie Sheen’s,” Kennedy wrote.

Kennedy noted literary experiments and a haiku movement emerging on Twitter. And on the UN’s website today, Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO, appears to give a nod to Twitter as a place where legitimate creative writing takes place.

"In a constantly evolving world, a world of rapid change and social transformation, poets have a presence alongside civil movements and know how to alert consciences to the world’s injustices as well as encourage appreciation of its beauty,” Bokova says. “We can also see potential in new technologies and short messages that circulate on social networks, breathing fresh life into poetry, fostering creativity and the sharing of poems and verses that can help us to engage more fully with the world."

So with that in mind, we want to know, Do you think social media is a realm where creative writing, literature and poetry can flourish? Let us know in the comment section below.

And, if you’re feeling up to it, take a stab at representing a well known work into 140 characters (including spaces).