Poems are a form of texting, says the poet laureate

The poem is the original text, said Carol Ann Duffy, the poet laureate, in an interview with The Guardian. Just as with texting, in poetry you can "say more with less" and "it allows feelings and ideas to travel big distances in a very condensed form".

 

The Guardian challenged its readers to pen a verse or two about a story in the news in textspeak. Some of their efforts are in the comments here.

 

I reprinted a couple of text poems in this old post.

Comments

[Marc Leavitt]

Susan:
The analogy is apt for today, but in an earlier time, the analogy might well have been to call a poem a summary, or a precis; the haiku is a parallel concept. Another near-synonym is the type of "shorthand" developed by newspaper reporters who use mnemonic keywords to recall quotations and narratives at a later time.

[Virtual Linguist]

Very true, Marc. Thanks.

[red bottom heel]

If you wish to be the best man, you must suffer the bitterest of the bitter.

[sophie]

LOL also means laugh out loud and LMFAO means laugh my fat arse off apparently according to my daughter.

[ava]

I really don't get text talk, especially when a receive texts which are full of it. Can't we just text normal words.

[amelia]

Text talk is great it saves a hell of a lot of time and effort having to spell words out.