Periodic Fable

When I heard about the Hay Festival’s Most Beautiful Tweet contest as judged by Stephen Fry I did wonder what they were talking about. A tweet can be informative, interesting, surprising, witty, engaging, well-written, poetic – but beautiful?

Still, the Hay Festival’s director, Peter Florence described it thus: “The definition of most beautiful tweet could fall into a number of different categories: it could prove the most eloquent; the most impassioned; the best demonstration of a clever pun or metaphor; the most evocative description of a place or emotion, or perhaps prove that brevity is conducive to levity, and be the wittiest tweet ever committed to the Twittersphere.” Which makes a bit more sense…

As the tweet was chosen only from those which were submitted to the competition, it was always likely to be one created especially for the competition that won. It was Canadian Mark Mackenzie whose tweet (above) was judged best.

Rather witty, yes, but most beautiful? Not in my eyes I’m afraid. Still on the look out for what I’d call a beautiful tweet… I’ll get back to you. But it would probably be written by a poet.  Look at Alison Brackenbury for inspiration. This one is a poem in its own right yet shorter even than a haiku.