Friday, May 04, 2007

I Luv U!

Terri found this lovely snippet in the Gulf News and passed it on. The annual text poetry competition was initiated by British mobile phone operator T-Mobile, and this year asked for romantic poems written in in txt speech of less than 160 letters.

Text messaging is not only the province of the young, it seems, and this year the second prize was scooped by "a love-struck pensioner"!:
Eileen Bridge, 68, a grandmother, from Accrington, Lancashire, won £350 in the "txt laureate" competition, after she took second place with an ode to her husband of six months. The entry read: "O hart tht sorz, My luv adorz, He mAks me liv, He mAks me giv, Myslf 2 him, As my luv porz." The retired teacher was only beaten by London law student Ben Ziman-Bright, 23, who scooped the top prize of £1,000. He wrote: "Not even the wet rustle of rain can dampen today. Your text buoys me above oil-rainbow puddles like a paper boat, so that even soaked to the skin, I am grinning."
A T-Mobile survey carried out in the UK discovered that:
40% of us cherish mobile love messages by keeping them on their handset, and nearly half of us (46%) crave flirty SMSs and poems. Under 24s are the most sentimental - 49% keep more than 20 romantic texts on their phone, while only 16% of people over 45 years keep that many. Women (40%) and under 24s (62%) find it easiest to communicate feelings via text rather than face-to-face, while one in five men (19%) find poetry the most romantic form of communication.
So why not send your loved one a romantic txt message in poetry today ... and so we can all enjoy it, post it here!

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

aw heck. a grand of english money! for that...um...

Anonymous said...

Yeah.. what a way to drum up business. I really wonder about the people who don't realize it's just a marketing ploy. I mean look, why would a mobile phone operator want SMS poems ? obvious reason is because they want to make money from them :)

Anonymous said...

And just as an afterthought, a teacher of English promoting txt speech ? :D

bibliobibuli said...

;D i'm just jealous i can't spk it 2

Anonymous said...

My partner text-messaged me this:
"I can't wait to kiss the pasta and hold the casserole in my arms. I am on the early bus and will arrive at 7. Kisses for the hearty cook."

Methinks this kind of competition is miles better than those urging you to send in your myriad SMS votes for some wannabe singer.

ummahzy said...

hey Anonymous,
English teachers are suppose to teach language, right?
REAL language
REAL LIVE LANGUAGE!

Granted, they sometimes expose students to darn near dead language, but why not bring real life into the classroom?

As for poetry via sms, my fiance and I are in a long distance relationship so our poems are part of the glue thats holding us together. Just wish I had saved them all, LOL.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous : those are different. They're not in txt speech.

kadidiaterri : English teachers need not necessarily teach language. They could teach maths for instance, or even Geology. The fact that they are English does not mean they have to teach the language.

Anyway, if you teach txt speech, your students would not be prepared for the real world at all. They'd never even be able to apply for college or a job.

Anonymous said...

bgfhfggh testing

bibliobibuli said...

haha kam! you made it here! thanks so much for your sms the other day. was so disappointed that dato' hamid was too drunk to send it himself

Anonymous said...

Dear Sharon,

Don't know what I'm doing wrong. I've attempted to post 5 comments but only that little one came out. Very frustrating. Maybe this one will work, maybe it won't.

Kam

bibliobibuli said...

hurray - it did work!!