New Poetry Competition from iSGTW

Fancy a break from the e-concertation meeting? Look no further..

Competition Time: Poetry for computing

iSGTW challenges our readers to try and come up with a Japanese poem or ‘haiku’ for grid, cloud, volunteer or high-performance computing and any other high-end computing.

The rules of this ancient Japanese poetry are simple: each poem is composed of a maximum of three lines, with 5 syllables on the first line, 7 on the next, and 5 on the last.

At the scifaiku website, fans of science fiction express their passion for time travel, spaceships and aliens through haiku. Traditionally the poetry makes reference to nature, but “scifaiku” calls for science fiction themes such as:

Asteroids collide
without a sound . . .
We maneuver between fragments.

It seemed unfair that science fiction fans should have all the fun, so we thought our readers could try their hands at this art, focusing on computing. This is challenging given the number of syllables in phrases like ‘distributed computing infrastructure concertation’.

Other disciplines seem easier; someone from the field of physics wrote:

Waves are approaching.
Try to capture them. You can’t.
Now they’re particles.

Our readers are invited to give it a try, and send in their best computing haikus (“compukus?”).

To sweeten the pot, the creators of the best haikus will receive the glory of seeing their name — and their poem — printed online as part of an iSGTW Link of the Week. Time to switch on those creative neurons …

Competition can be found here.

- Adrian Giordani, iSGTW