Wednesday 23 January 2008

nano-poetry festival

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We welcome you all to the chasing-sheep nano-poetry festival ... which will now run for an unspecified period depending on levels of interest.

A definition: nano-poetry
is a genre for poems composed of fewer characters than the term 'nano-poetry'.  (i.e. 10 characters or less, including punctuation).

Whether a work is nano is easily assessed by counting the constituent characters.  Whether a work is poetry is somewhat more subjective!

So far we have the following 4 works of economic brilliance:


On the onomatopoeic howling of wolves, by Ms Signs:

woolf


On behalf of the prodigal son before his return home, Dr But Why? offers:

famly


On the disappointment of lost consonants, I comment:

issing


And on the neverendingness of the search for meaning, Badger contributes:

wh?


We invite you to contribute as many nano-poems as you can muster. No work too small :) Personally I intend leaving my computer on over night to see what the cats can compose by morning ... 

10 comments:

trousers said...

Hmm, a couple of rough thoughts

ointles

(what's the point?)

endles

(interminable)

vwl-lss

(though I fear the hyphen may be extraneous to requirements)

Stray said...

oh! I love the endles in particular ...

I think you may have created the world's first triptych nano-poem ...

Genius :)

Greg K Nicholson said...

Here's a poem I call “Ah, well…”:

Ah, well…

XXYXX said...

I'm tempted to go for the whole John Cage 4'33" silence thing ...







as the ultimate nano-poem.

Existentially I'd suggest

I

More verbosely

'nuff said

Or knowing how you like anagrams

Anyone Port (sounds techie)
Nape Nor Toy (sounds like a proverb)
Earn No Typo (sounds like a legal clause)
Yearn On Top (a romantic position)
Rate No Pony (betting tip)
Apron Ye Not (witches spell)
Nay Pet No Or (nearly a Yorkshire saying)

Unknown said...

Oh the passing season of heat

sum'er

And

As sirens blight the silence

nee-naw

Jean said...

Concrete poetry:

squ
are

t
ri
an
gular

v
e
r
t
i
c
a
l

Queen Vixen said...

cider

a summary of regret for starting friday evening early and stumbling upon a blog which challenges the mind, leaving a void in the vault of self esteem and a sense of failure when unable to respond in a worthy fashion

Stray said...

greg - I think ah, well is rather fab.

bobo - nice anagrams ... I have to say Ms M is the master anagram solver - she whips through the Guardian cryptic like nobody's business.

absolute vanilla (& atyllah) ... those are both beautiful - and such lovely contrast :)

Jean - omg! They are fab - and sooooo fantastically nerdy :) I have been thinking about whether it is possible to write Regular Expression poetry ... but Ms M has asked me never to attempt to explain it to her again ...

Queen Vixen ... ah yes, I remember those days ...

I think I will make a special blog widget for our nano-poems ... but I must finish my proper work first, so it won't be til next week ... but I have a lovely idea :)

Ms Melancholy said...

Dedicated to dysfunctional families everywhere...

faiils me

The Periodic Englishman said...

I should go

(The realisation to end all realisations)