How long is a poem?

Maybe it's 2+ years of tweeting, perhaps it's because I'm used to giving soundbites to TV cameras at protests and events, but whatever the reason, I've become increasingly drawn to attempting to convey deep meaning with few words. Not really slogans, a bit more personal or specific than epigrams, I guess the best way to convey their intent is to describe them as poems, so that is what I'm doing.

Very short poems do have a venerable history. I first met with them as 'nonsense' rhymes as a child, discovering Haiku, Zen Koan and Sufi sayings as I grew older. They also remind me of the phrases found on embroidered or woven hangings - stitched samplers.

How much I have been influenced by these, I'm not quite sure - but these poems are shorter than the titles of many works - in some way they are their own titles. Though they're tweetable in length, I wanted to do more than just write out and post the text so I've treated them as small experiments in typography - mixing the serif (Elephant) and sans serif (Bebas) fonts, and uploaded them into the gallery below.

I've also included a guest poem by Jane Jones : I'd love your contributions too - please tweet them to @re_present or use the contact form.