Watch: What is poetry, exactly? Is an answer even possible?
"The waters of poetry run wild and deep."
Although Muhammad Ali spent a long time training to become a boxing legend, he is also known for having created what is probably the shortest poem of all time.
Harvard’s graduating class in 1975 was mesmerised by Ali and his message about unity and friendship. The class longed for more, asking him to come up with a poem. He did. It was, “Me, We”. Or “Me, Weee?”
If those two words are a poem, what is a poem meant to be? Poets have struggled for ages, trying to define what a poem is actually supposed to be like. The video above sails in to offer answers that many poets could not.
The lines between poetry, visual art, song and even prose are blurred, and poetry will keep evolving.
Interestingly though, despite all the rules and codes, humans continue to do a better job of writing poetry than Artificial Intelligence programs. In an experiment, judges had to pick who had written each of six sonnets – a machine or a human. They got each of them right.
