Your tweets, now with more poetry

Roopika Risam

Poetweet transforms users' tweets into sonnets, rondels, or indrisos

Ever wonder what tweets would look like remixed into poetic form? This question, which few people were probably asking, is the premise behind the application Poetweet. Simply type in a Twitter handle, choose between sonnet, rondel, or indriso, and the application generates a poem.

"Divya Victor" is one such poem generated through Poetweet, using the Jacket2 Twitter account:

On the Canadian prose poem:
Textile poetics:
Kuhl on W. Stevens' late meta-poem:
Today: "Russian Counter-poetics."

A fierce intellectual pacificism:
Audio links to 38 individual pomes
A fierce intellectual pacifism:
In WHYY's “Radio Times" ”

Review of "You Animal Machine":
Yes, sound matters:
Throws the rose to Mrs. Valentine:
Tomlinson-George Oppen letters:
The front page of Jacket2 magazine:

This mashup of tweets from the account were fashioned by the application into the form of a rondel: a poetic form consisting of two stanazas of four lines and one stanza of five lines. The rondel originates in French lyric poetry and is typically used for declarations of love and emotions within its literary tradition.

Beneath the novelty of the application, with its ability to automatically generate lines that fit within the limits of the poetic form, lies a complex set of operations. The application's algorithm sifts through the user's tweets, looking for ways to combine rhyme and meter to fit the chosen form. While the poems generally meet requirements of form, the content produces comical results. Technological singularity Poetweet isn't, but it's certainly a bit of fun.

April 19, 2015

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Over the last 20 years or so, digital media has offered a new site for the production, dissemination, and consumption of texts. A proliferation of platforms has led to new forms through which writers share their ideas and create art. Since the earliest ventures into electronic literature, like hypertext stories shared on webpages, the development of Web 2.0 technologies and social media has turned all users into potential creators of content. Texts that emerge often blur the lines between the mundane and the extraordinary.

This commentary considers the poetics of contemporary digital texts, objects, and cultures. Influenced by the questions of power, representation, and globalization central to postcolonial studies, posts consider poetics of platform, found poetry online, materiality of electronic literature, and the cultural logic of viral textuality.

Roopika Risam is Assistant Professor of English and English Education at Salem State University. Her research examines the intersections of postcolonial and Africana studies, and the role of digital humanities in mediating between the two. Her monograph, Postcolonial Digital Humanities, is under contract with Northwestern University Press, and her work is forthcoming in Left History, Digital Humanities Quarterly, and First Monday.

Jacket2 Commentaries feature invited posts by poets and scholars who take a close, serial look at poetry scenes, archives, poetic concerns, or theoretical clusters. Commentaries, although curated, are not edited by Jacket2 staff. We welcome your comments. Send queries and notes to Commentaries Editor Jessica Lowenthal or contact us at this page.