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Twaiku, the poetry of Twitter
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Sep 2, 2009
By Joel Hancock
I’ve recently discovered that there actually exists, out there in the wonderful world of web, a phenomenon which combines two of my favourite things ; Twitter and Haiku. If you’re a fan of the ancient Japanese art of micro-poetry or you fancy yourself as something of a modern day Basho then you’ll love the Twaiku movement.
What the twaiku?
OK, I’m just going to assume that you know what Twitter is. You’d have to be living under a rock not to have noticed the rise and rise of the web’s favourite micro blogging service. But if you’re not familiar with haiku then I’m willing to be a little more forgiving.
Haiku is a simple form of poetry built first in China then mastered by the Japanese. Wikipedia has a good low down on haiku if you want the long story but the short one is that a haiku is basically three lines of text, not necessarily rhyming, but traditionally using alternating numbers of syllables. Old school says that the first line has 5 syllables, the second 7, and the third 5 again but you can pretty much free-style it and people often do.
Being as minimal as it is haiku is almost the perfect candidate to be transported via a tweet. This also captures the spirit of haiku. There’s a ”zen-ness” about it, of dispatching your twaiku to the ether without attachment. It’s perfect. Anyway, turns out there are lots of people twaikuing and there are plenty of sweet places online you can go to see where it’s all going down.
Some twaiku links / frog jumps in / plop
The Twaiku Fan Wiki is a good place to get up to speed with twaikuing. It has some nice examples of twaiku, a good summary of what haiku is, and a list of some notable twaiku authors.
You might also want to check out TwiHaiku, a great site featuring twaikus from a whole society of twitteratti. The poems are compiled and posted via their feed on Twitter which is definitely worth following.
Finally, my favourite twaiku site would have to be Hai-to the-Ku. Nice design, great twaiku, and very well done. I love the way it fades new twaikus in and out in the main content area. It’s simple but it really is very cool.