midwest - transplant

MoPo

This morning, the Beeb had a really interesting report about Japanese who write and read literature, especially poetry, via their mobile phones. The most popular is tanka, a slightly longer ancestor of haiku. Chie Kato, who is 21, has already published three books of her mobile tanka. A Japanese network has even begun a show where viewers text-in poems to be broadcast and discussed. Not surprisingly, literary critics are skeptical (from an article profiling mobile tanka):

“Compared with traditional tanka, these are not literary pieces,” Mr Inose says. “It’s like the difference between a beautifully composed photograph of a landscape, and the kind of snapshot which young people take with a mobile phone camera.”

Nevertheless, to anyone who text-messages me with a haiku or tanka poem: I promise I'll publish it here.

posted by mideast-transplant @ 2:15 PM