Text messaging - far from being an easy way to transmit quick information without having to talk to anyone - is an art form, according to The Guardian. Which is why it is hosting a text message poem competition with the first prize of £1,000.

It all gets a bit wanky: "This is a new literary form and it must be left to define its own parameters". But even so, we like a bit of fun as much as the next man. And so you have until 22 April to text your entry, whereupon a short list of seven will be chosen and sent to all entrants. You then get to vote on each one out of 10 and the winner will be published on 3 May.

All very interesting and novel. But didn't the Japanese perfect this several thousand years ago with their haiku poems?

The paper gave several examples today, among them this:

Domain names
that's what I do
all day. Today
it's fish:bluefish.com
redfish.com
smilefish.com
I used to think
of car names
Zephyr, Orion.
At night I stare
at my fish in the bowl

Hmmm.

This reporter asked Reg staff for text poems but it would seem we are poetically challenged. Lips Leyden was unimpressed: "I regard poetry as a masturbatory activity". Eh? Never stopped him before.

Andrew "Smokin' Cube" Orlowski suggested (after a long lunch): "KRN UR A WNKR."

Lester "Wild man" Haines wrote one but was so heavily caught up in his codebreaker competition that it arrived in gibberish.

As for this reporter. Off the cuff, er. Hang on.

"Tap tap tap
tap tap tap
tap tap tap
How is this
hi technology
exactly
?"

Oh, if you actually want to enter - send em to the following number: 07753 828610. ®

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