Discourses and debates taking place on media platforms like twitter engage us in new literary formats that some think of as poetic in and of themselves. The brevity of the form dictates experimentation with language while the convention and encouragement to engage not just another person but entire audiences in conversation impel writers and readers to embrace short forms in what we might describe as ‘digital haiku’. Some argue that this leads to form over content, and that brevity leads only to notation rather than condensing that might be un-packaged – as one might a zip file, or ‘just add water’ like instant coffee.

Inevitably poetry doesn’t always fit, so considering the smaller package of social media in the same way one might choose a post card rather than send a fuller letter, here are some ‘twitter sized’ samples from forthcoming Poetry Point Press releases coming out later this year.

‘wanting
only the lonely sea
the lapping of waves
silence
enough to hear a slap of fish
blind to its flash of pearl drop skin
reflecting life back up into space’
(excerpt from ‘Careering’ m.d.)

‘…and let the spiral us
inner circle wide
spit across that lake
where our canoe lies
on the opposing shore…’
(excerpt from ‘Same Old Same Old’ m.d.)

Like angels the scars soared in haloed welts
lumini skins, carpet worn freckled pelts
grand theft auto battling wheels and innocence
we held hands – joysticked thumbs conducting things
(excerpt from Scars and So’s, m.d.)

‘once airborne,

we’d drop the predictions 
accelerating away into sunrise

winter blood red almost floating

tweaked grey clouds reflecting

on the frozen lake

flashback warm as fine wine’
(excerpt from ‘Expansion’ m.d.)

“…a speech maker plowed word upon furrow,
crows settling in the tracks behind: worms… grubs…
the sky a narrow pen of purple sketching silhouette dawn
above the hedgerow field shrubs.”
(excerpt from ‘Careering’ m.d.)