Gather all ye tweets: Poetweet turns them into instant verse
Poetry lives in the heart, in the soul, in the mind -- and now it's growing in the least likely place imaginable: Twitter.
You may be a poet without even realising it. There's one easy way to find out: Poetweet, a website that turns your everyday proclamations into meditations on the nature of breakfast, rain, public transport and the myriad other ordinary observations you make about ordinary occurrences.
It's real easy to use: Simply enter your @username into the box on the site's landing page, and select the type of poem you'd like to "write": a sonnet, a rondel or an indriso. Each of these has a specific structure, based on number of lines, rhyming scheme, syllables and other conventions.
The website uses algorithms that search your tweets for phrases that fit these conventions in form -- if not entirely in content. So while you get something that makes sense in terms of structure, its meaning might be a little on the garbled side. You can then choose whether to share your poem via social media.
The exercise -- available in English and Portuguese -- is more for fun than to necessarily teach you anything substantial about poetry composition. It also draws attention to writing courses by Brazil-based cultural centre b_arco.
Just for a giggle, we ran Twitter accounts @EmilyEDickinson and @NerudaLove -- accounts that post Emily Dickinson and Pablo Neruda quotes, respectively -- through the generator for a sonnet and an indriso respectively. The results, posted below, were interesting, if not quite as coherent as either poet's actual oeuvre.
Have a go for yourself on the Poetweet website, and feel free to share your results with us in the comments below.