Recently I went to see the musical Wicked in San Francisco.  Ever since, I have been heavily impacted by the music and the story.  It seems to have taken on a profound level for me.  It inspires me to crave beauty in my life.  It calls me to be a better person.  It fills me up with love and hope and… longing.

Longing for purpose and a calling that give shape and meaning to my day.  Longing for the courage to follow my vision.  Longing for the clarity that comes when my life is well in order.

Longing is a form of my muse.  It is something that stirs me up and causes me to want more.  So longing is the theme of this week’s Twitter Laureate show.

What do you long for in your life, in your poetry, in your craft?  How does longing inspire you?  Tweet your reaction in poetic form (any form will do) and tag it with the famous Twitter Laureate Hashtag:  #4tl.  Then don’t forget to check in with twitter search to see what others long for and how they interact with their muse.

I long for community in art.

Dennis

Old Helen of Troy had a mighty fine face — Paris Agamemnon sent a fleet of 1K after her. But who on Twitter could inspire a similar effect?

Tweet a 135 character poem about your favorite Twitter avatar — tag it with #4TL .  And give the object of your affection props — give them an @ recognition and invite them to slam back a short poem about another avatar.

Spread the love. spread the joy. spread the poetry.

Why do you write poetry?  Why do you do it on twitter?

Please share.  We want to know.  There are probably as many reasons as there are Laureates.

Here’s the challenge:  share in 135 characters or less by tweeting your reason and tagging it #4tl

If you want to be really clever, make it rhyme!

The wind blows soft and gentle down the hill
Infused with scents of flowers yet it still

In the past, Twitter Laureate has encouraged individual poets to create their own compositions and tweet them for our collective enjoyment.  This week we raise the bar and challenge you to participate in a shared poetic venture.  Rather than asserting your independence, we ask you to voluntarily submit to our collective interdependence.

This weeks poetry assignment is for us to ALL collectively build a poem.  Each poet is challenged to contribute one couplet at a time.  Here are the details:

• Your couplet may be in any meter or configuration of iambs (beats).  The only technical requirement is that it has to be composed of 2 lines of similar rhythm (eg iambic pentameter).
• Your couplet must rhyme (sorry, I know this is old fashioned, but we’ll get to blank verse in another challenge).
• Your couplet will continue onward from the most recently contributed #4tl tweet.  Go to http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%234tl and find the most recent conforming contribution and compose the couplet which follows it.

At the end of the assignment we will assemble the resultant poem and publish it here in all of its multi-authored glory!

Of course, don’t forget to tag your tweet #4tl so others can find it and build onto it.

The first couplet is, of course, the first 2 lines of this post.  Enjoy

The world was shocked and saddened by the sudden announcement of the deaths of 3 iconic media personalities this last week.  Michael Jackson – the King of Pop.  Farrah Fawcett- Charlie’s Angel, Model, Cancer Warrior.  Billy Mayes – Pitch Man extraordinaire who put Oxy Clean on the national consciousness.

I don’ t know what kind of impact these deaths had on you, but this week’s assignment is to write a poetic tweet – using any short form of poetry (sorry, but the 140 character restriction rules out the epic poem form).  Tag the tweet with #4TL and you have done your little bit to celebrate the lives and mourn the deaths of these 3 people.

As an extra challenge, if you tweet about Michael Jackson, work in the title to one of his songs as part of the tweet.

The Haiku form lends itself very well to the twitter 140 character format.  It is a short form, condensing all of its meaning into 3 lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables.   If you want to get a good view of Haiku on twitter, search for the tag #haiku and you will find them continually being written over a broad range of topics.

This week (until June 23) Twitter Laureate celebrates the form of Haiku and invites all Twitter Laureates so share original Hiaku under the #4TL tag.  There are no requirements or rules.  Only poetry.  If you desire, you can use additional tags such at #poem or #haiku.

At the end of the week I’ll do something (not sure what) to try and assemble all the different contributions so that we can get a sense together of our collaboration and contribution.

I look forward to seeing the result!

Specifically the weather where you are.  What would Shakespeare say if he gave the weather report on your local TV or radio station?

As kids we knew how this worked:

Rain, rain, go away
Come again another day!

Now’s your chance to revisit that little piece of Dick or Jane that you may have forgotten about.

The rules are simple.

• You have one tweet – 140 characters to say it all
• Tag the tweet with the #tl hashtag (ok, that leaves 136 characters left for your creativity)
• Check out the other contributions by searching on the hashtag

At the end of a week, we’ll collect up the tweets that we judge worthy and publish them here at Twitter Laureate.

Happy Tweeting!

Here in the US we are getting ready to celebrate the cooperation between the Pilgrims and the Native Americans which resulted in a bountiful harvest.  No doubt without this cooperation and sharing the Pilgrims would have had a very sad ending to their adventure in the New World.

In late November in the US, it is traditional to spend the later half of November remembering the items for which we are thankful.  Let’s extend this across the world.  Surely there is much to  be thankful for.  And in this global rememberance, we can emulate some of the collaobration that was evidenced in the first American celebration.

Tag your tweet with #tl (Twitter Laureate), so we can find them all on hashtags.org or Twitter search.  Take some time to review what others are thankful for… you never know, it might promt a thankful spirit in you yourself!

What’s been the best book you’ve read this year?  Why did you like  it?  Can you summarize a bit of the plot in 140 characters or less (or in iambic pentameter)?  There are so many ways you can approach this topic that I won’t even bother to list them here.

I find reading a book a good diversion when life gets stressful.  Life is stressful now, so I have a great appreciation for time spent in the land of literature.  Unfortunately for me, too much time is spent doing other things, so I can’t read as much as I want… so I’m looking forward to a good escapist fix through Twitter Laureate.

Please tell your friends about Twitter Laureate (assuming they know how to read).    Encourage them to give 140 characters of literary love before Friday.  And of course, don’t forget to tag your post with #TL so we can all follow along.

In just a couple days the US presidential election will happen.  Hopefully we’ll know the outcome reasonably soon to Tuesday.  For the next week Twitter Laureate will focus on the election.

Who is your candidate?  What doi you expect from the election?  What do you see for the future of the United States given the candidate who won?

I’ll bet there will be plenty of drama around the election, so get your tweeter ready.