The friendly bleep signalling a text message delivery visibly tweaks the corners of lips into smiles in the office, on the train, the bus – everywhere. In fact, two million text messages are sent in the UK every hour, the Guardian newspaper claimed yesterday. Without realising it, people are writing short messages in a way society has never seen before.
An initiative from media company Blink, under its ‘Centrifugalforces’ program, realises the potential of mobile phone technology as the perfect platform for poetry, and has created a new project set to transform the city of Leeds into a cacophony of bleeping phones – enough to turn Trigger Happy TV’s Dom Joly green with envy.
‘CityPoems’ is a year-long project launching in February 2003, which will invite mobile phone users in Leeds to take part in an interactive poetry event.
‘We all use our mobile phones creatively without really knowing it,’ says Andrew Wilson, Editor and Director of Centrifugalforces. ‘Whether to flirt, to send jokes and picture messages or just gossip. CityPoems will give us the chance to use texting skills to say something about ourselves and the place we live and work in, and to read how everyone else feels about the same things.’
A series of ‘Poem Points’, each displaying a number, will be set up at various locations around the city – the train station, bus stops, cinemas, galleries, theatres, even the Leeds United football ground. When individuals text the numeral to the CityPoems phone number, within seconds an SMS text message poem will be sent back to the user, relating to that particular site in Leeds.
To kick-start the project, community groups are participating in a series of creative writing workshops to produce short poems.
A group of deaf children at Allerton Grange High School, who often depend on text messaging as a vital communication tool, are working with professional writers to create poems using British Sign Language. The poems will then be recoded into Multimedia Message Service (MMS) picture messages and as a short video, intended in the future for 3G mobile phones with video facilities.
The high school has been designated as one of the ‘Poem Points’ in the city, but unlike other locations will incorporate MMS images rather than SMS text messages.
Meanwhile, call centre employees of online bank, First Direct, are also involved in creative writing workshops. Other groups taking part include: Burmantofts Senior Action, Yes Cyber-Chapeltown, Middleton Play and Early Learning Centre and HMP Leeds.
Peter and Anne Sansom of Poetry Business are currently leading a number of workshops, including at Allerton Grange School, while author and oral history collector Khadijah Ibrahiim is guiding young West Indian people in the community through creative writing courses.
According to Lisa Roberts, Creative Director of Blink and CityPoems Managing Director, the workshops are nearing completion. ‘To date, close to 200 poems have been generated through the workshops,’ she comments. ‘These will be the first to be available via the Poem Points. Being creative in any way is a tremendous thrill, and the writers we’ve been working with are so experienced at allowing people to surprise themselves with what they can achieve, people can’t help but get satisfaction from it.’
Since Wilson and Roberts founded Centrifugalforces in Spring 2000, the initiative has launched a number of successful projects incorporating SMS text messaging to bring poetry to a wider audience.
For Valentines Day 2002, the group published a selection of romantic ‘Thumb-Love’ poems short enough to be sent as text messages. In Autumn 2002, the company was asked to devise a mobile communications project for the Cheltenham Festival of Literature, resulting in ‘Onesixty’. Described as the world’s first text message literary magazine, the project has become ongoing and still continues to receive submissions.
In 2001, Peter and Anne Samson conducted workshops for students in Huddersfield and Dewsbury as part of the Kirklees Schools Text Message Poetry competition, while in the same year Centrifugalforces also advised the Guardian on their text message poetry competition – ultimately attracting more than 7,500 entries in two weeks.
Roberts’ philosophy is that art should be fun, to encourage greater participation – and Centrifugalforces seems to have hit on a creative goldmine, by incorporating what has become one of the most immediate and popular ways for people to communicate in the 21st century.
‘I think poetry works well in text form, as it lets the writer respond quickly to an idea, communicate a feeling or experience almost immediately,’ Roberts asserts. ‘Texting offers an opportunity to document – but also due to the restrictive nature of the format, which allows a only 160 characters max – writers need to work within boundaries while creating economical, linear works which sometimes require a new use of language.
‘At the moment I think text messages – the fun, and the way that SMS can take little snapshots with words – have got plenty to offer contemporary poetry.’
For more information about ‘CityPoems’ contact Blink, 01484 301 805, email info@blinkmedia.org or visit the City Poems and Centrifugalforces websites
