Peter Sinclair: The text poet in all of us...

Most readers will recall the Muses of Greek legend. Daughters of Zeus, they were a bunch of bluestockings whose task was to peek over the poet's shoulder and breathe life into the artist's brush.

I'm happy to report that these classy classical ladies are at last working up their typing skills and moving online.

Originally there were only three, but the turf proved so extensive they had to carve it up and increase their number to around 11.

Literature alone was subdivided into several areas of responsibility — Calliope took charge of epics, Erato of romantic verse, while Thalia had to inspire us in the fields of pastoral and comic poetry. I wonder if they'll now consider appointing a Muse for e-verse?

This week Guardian Unlimited, online presence of the Guardian, has summoned them all, and you have just two days to invoke their help and text the newspaper a poem by mobile phone, using no more than 160 characters.

The winning poem — to be chosen by the entrants — will net its author £1,000 (about $NZ3370), with £500 ($1685) for second and £100 ($337) for each of three runners-up.

The popularity of the text-message has been explosive overseas. In July 1999, one billion were being sent each month. By January last year the figure had ballooned to four billion. Now a 15 billion messages are tapped out every month, and a new language has sprung up to fit text messaging's tiny desktop.

New Zealand has yet to experience the degree of hype which has greeted SMS (Short Message Service) overseas, so for those of you still to get — or send — the message, the Guardian offers guidance.

Vic Keegan introduces the competition, text-message poets Andrew Wilson, poetry editor of centrifugalforces and Ian McMillan, who for some reason was poet-in-residence at BarnsleyFC, present some of their own SMS poems.

Wilson also volunteers some tips straight from the coal-face — how, for example, to capture on mobile that luminous detail the Muses prize so highly.

"A text-message poem has to find one truthful moment and describe it," he says, among other guidelines on the constraints and possibilities of the form. Here he offers 86 characters of his own as an example:

Txt me Friday if you like,

Ask me later, I just might,

May be busy, may be free,

See you soon tho' hopefully


Certainly there's something about these messages straight from the keyboard of the Muse — though the vowel mostly has to take its chances:

My Day

Alrm bz

Ungdly hr

Gt up

Hv shwr

Gt 2 wrk

Ansr phn

Rd email

Hv a moan

Dwn pub

Gt drunk

With mates

Talk junk

Stggr hme

Fall in puddle

Need bed

& lvly cuddle


Downright Chaucerian. And how well the form catches the disjunction of modern life in this stoic haiku:

Stuck in traffic.

This phone is immobile

And, of course, love:

Passion is never spent -

Passion is slaughtered -

My stubborn passion

Was hung drawn and 1/4d


Thanks to wireless technology you, too, can be a poet, and you've got until April 14 (our time) to text the Guardian a poem by mobile using 160 characters or less. Simply write it and send it to 07753 828610.

Good luck!

* petersinclair@email.co


Links


The Circle of the Muses

Guardian Unlimited

A selection of entries to the SMS text-message poetry competition

centrifugalforces

BarnsleyFC