Twitter Haiku in London: An Interactive Poetry Competition

London commuters who pass through King’s Cross and St Pancras are being invited to participate in the world’s first interactive Twitter poetry competition.

Via guardian.co.uk

The poetic heritage of London railway station St Pancras is in no doubt. As the beady eyes of the late poet laureate John Betjeman gaze up from his statue at the magnificent neo-Gothic arch of the station he helped to save in the 1960s, lines of his work adorn the bronze tribute’s base. Now, the scurrying hordes of commuters and Eurostar daytrippers who pass beneath him have the opportunity to see their own poetry on display in the station, via Twitter.

London commuters who pass through King’s Cross and St Pancras are being invited to submit haiku-style poems on the subject of “the great British summer” from their phones using the social micro-blogging tool. The poems are displayed, within minutes of submission, on a board in the stations, from today until Friday. The best will then be selected by judges including the poet Jackie Kay and artist Yoko Ono.

“From The Ladykillers to Harry Potter, the station has been recorded in film and literature but the thousands of people it brings into London each day are rarely acknowledged,” said Peter Millican, the head of Kings Place.

Commuters simply have to “tweet” their haiku from their phones using their existing Twitter accounts, placing the prefix @kingsplace before their poem in order for it to be picked up by the Kings Place Twitter account.

Read the entire article here.

Image Source: Stephan Geyer