Ok let me be clear from the get go. When I say, “Why Twitter Poetry is Killing You,” by you, I mean me and by killing I mean wasting time. Well, you get my overall idea. Help! I’ve fallen into poetweet and I can’t get up.
It all happened rather innocently so allow me to make a feeble attempt at recalling the details. Without fail, every morning at 5:30 am I’m up and working to try to help get my husband out the door. Sometimes it’s helping him out the door and other times I’m pushing him out the door. I have work to do here.
I enjoy my solitude and before I sit down to work, I make myself a cup of coffee and begin my day while Mother Nature is still quietly coaxing the sun to make an appearance. With coffee in hand, I move over to my desk where I’ll check my email and social media accounts before beginning the creative process of editing pictures and video and crafting posts for the website.
Sometimes I get distracted. There — I’ve said it. Perhaps it was when I was looking for a quote for my last post or maybe I was simply daydreaming about poetry. Did I ever mention that I took a poetry writing workshop at UNH with Charles Simi? who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry? I’ve always done some form of creative writing my entire life, be it poetry, short stories, or long works of fiction. Writing non-fiction, as I do for this website, has been a different creative process, and requires me to use certain writing apps so I can manage my individual points with particular care, that will and does in the end, create the finished piece. In the end it’s still a form of writing, it just doesn’t feel as creative? But I digress.
We’ve established that I was working (I swear I was) and that I was on social media, but how I stumbled upon poetweet has yet to be determined. What exactly is poetweet? First things first: Go to the website, where you don’t even have to register, and put in your Twitter username. Then choose from sonnet, rondel, or indriso forms. And now for a little refresher course on poetry (even though you didn’t ask).
Sonnet: A poem of fourteen lines using any of a number of formal rhyme schemes, in English typically having ten syllables per line.
Rondel: A rondeau, especially one of three stanzas of thirteen or fourteen lines, with the first two lines of the opening quatrain recurring at the end of the second quatrain and the concluding sestet.
Indriso: A form created by contemporary Spanish poet Isidro Iturat. The poem is formed by two triplets and two one-line stanzas (3-3-1-1), with free use of the rhyme and the number of syllables in its verses.
Here’s my initial sonnet using my tweets:
If you can’t tell, I’ve been slightly fixated lately about and that’s been apparent in my tweets. Once you understand that, the rest might start to make sense. Or not.
Here’s one from one of my Twitter friends and fellow travel blogger, Aaron (@elatlboy on Twitter). I think Aaron lives for coffee and I think he might just have coffee running through his veins. One thing I know for certain is that he’s 100% caffeine fueled. Maybe that’s why he has the most amazing Instagram pictures of coffee, of course, but his nature shots are incredible, too.
If you have writer’s block, brainstorming new ideas, or just want to goof off while at work (don’t let your boss catch you), I suggest creating your own Twitter poetry at poetweet. Once you do, share it on Twitter and come back and share a few lines here or on Twitter (@travelshopgirl).
See — goofing off can be productive.