[Music]
my name is Cowell and when it’s night or
when the moon is shining bright and all
the men have gone to bed I stay up late
I lick the bread now this is a poem
obviously and any of you ever heard it
it’s really quite famous online and I
know that a lot of people have read and
enjoyed it now who could have written it
it’s kind of old looking Shakespeare
Chaucer Emily Dickinson no it was
written by Sam Garland’s a British
author and he published it online a
couple of years ago on a public forum
and it did not stay there it went viral
and I became a meme now I was gonna ask
who knows what a meme is but someone
beat me to it
but according to the merriam-webster
dictionary a meme is an amusing or
interesting items such as a captions
picture of video or a jar of items
spread widely online and especially
through social media now in their
essence as I said memes are just funny
pictures matched up with funny texts and
I know this is not a very poetic
definition but I’ve come to find that my
ideas or means are a little more
open-minded than most people because I
believe that memes can be poetry and I
will do my absolute best to take you
along my train of thought because I know
it sounds like a stretch at this point
no I was surprised as a literature
student that memes were not being
discussed in an academic field because
they’re only present online they’re
everywhere so I was really surprised
about that so I took it for myself and
wrote my thesis on the more poetic
aspects of memes and got some of that
academic research started or so I hope
now it seems that memes are not being
discussed because people feel like memes
are ordinary
so they can possibly be poetry but I am
here to tell you that it is possible and
I’ll show you how during the Middle Ages
and antiquity even before that poetry
was enjoyed as a group event so one
person was reading them out loud or
performing it a group of people were
watching or listening and afterwards
there was a group discussion about what
it might mean and what it made people
feel like which is very different from
how we experience poetry today it’s more
a solitary thing now let’s compare the
old-time way of reading poetry to memes
shall we a facebook meme one person
reading it or post as some one person
posting it and making it a group of
people listening is a lot of people
retweeting we sharing reblogging re
whatever showing that they’ve read and
enjoyed it and group discussion can be
compared to a comment section people
writes about what it made them feel like
if it made them angry very often people
get offended by it so it really sparks
emotion so it seems that you can compare
the basics of poetry to the basics of
memes but does this mean that means our
poetry at this point I wasn’t convinced
yes I’m sure you’re not convinced as
well and I continued my research which
brought me to the question what is
poetry in the academic field this is one
of the big questions and through this we
don’t know we don’t have a conclusive
definition as to what is makes poetry
different from any other random texts
but we do however have a number of
characteristics that are applying to
poetry and I will be comparing four of
those characteristics to memes for you
today now first of all and the most
important one of all is poetic language
poetry bends the rules of grammar to
make it suit is chosen rhyme rhythm and
format for example our beams be mock to
the soul to remain like April hora
spread it’s beautiful it’s pompous it’s
really difficult and people don’t like
it
but the same can be said about language
play of means this is the Doge meme one
of the older most popular memes
I’m sure everyone has seen the shiba inu
kind of dog and you can see that the
characteristics of this meme are
fragmented short sentences wrongful use
of Gremory and words like wow to apply a
more animal type way of train of
thoughts to it and if you compare this
use of grammar to other animal memes
even dog memes you’ll find that they use
a different type of grammar so it seems
that grammar or poetic language defines
poetry but it also defines memes a
second characteristic is a visual aspect
in the Middle Ages a lot of texts are
illustrators or illuminated with
beautiful decorations around the edge
and this is no purely decorative very
often there is symbolism or context or
references to other texts from the same
era
and it makes the read so much more
interesting data ism is a more recent
example as you can see in this example
this is one of the most famous paper
poems by Valvano style called circus and
you can see how the visual and textual
are one unit you cannot separate the two
to make sure it’s a different or it’s a
different poem the same for example for
this increasingly verbose meme the image
is getting more and more childlike but
the text is getting more and more
complex so they do the complete opposite
but both enhance the meaning or the joke
in this case a third characteristic is a
political or satirical play very famous
here is the phone nervosa and out of the
story which uses the Front’s of a
fictional animal story to critique Qing
society and religion which is no minor
feet in a thirteenth century a lot of
memes can be made political very easily
as well this is an example of the gun
meme and the gun meme you add the word
gun to any random sentence
it’s a non-existing punchline it’s
ridiculous but hysterical in my personal
opinion but if you add gun to the right
sentence you get a political play or a
reference to the ongoing gun gun control
debates which is pretty heavy in the
United States so it seems that memes are
very easily made political depending on
the intention of the maker and
fourth and final characteristic is
absurdism absurdism is a broad spectrum
and you can see how in Dadaism they use
absurdism to get people engaged if you
read this it means nothing
it really doesn’t there’s no meaning but
if you read out loud and you use your
vocalization you play around with the
language a little bit you get something
there or there might be something there
so data is to enjoy it absurd isn’t to
get people involved but memes prefer to
use absurdism in the sense of the core
gesture in the Middle Ages who was the
only one who could critique his King
because everything he said was
considered a joke and if it’s a joke
it’s not hurting anyone right now
what I want you to take away from this
talk is this first of all we’ve we’ve
seen the memes have poetical language a
visual aspect a political and satirical
play and absurdism this made me conclude
that memes are a new branch of poetry
and confirm my beliefs that poetry is
still evolving to this day it is still
able to express new emotions express
critique and address difficult topics
it’s also interesting to note that this
movement is made almost entirely out of
young adults and teenagers but that’s a
different talk altogether so I want you
to remember the next time you see you me
first of all you know what it is
second of all if you see one that sparks
your interest in some way maybe read it
again consider there might be more there
than you thought was possible and
perhaps consider that memes can be a new
poetic way to express your personal
feelings and express your critique on
society or the status quo and even
address the topics that are sometimes
very difficult to talk about thank you
very much
[Applause]
my name is Cowell and when it’s night or
when the moon is shining bright and all
the men have gone to bed I stay up late
I lick the bread now this is a poem
obviously and any of you ever heard it
it’s really quite famous online and I
know that a lot of people have read and
enjoyed it now who could have written it
it’s kind of old looking Shakespeare
Chaucer Emily Dickinson no it was
written by Sam Garland’s a British
author and he published it online a
couple of years ago on a public forum
and it did not stay there it went viral
and I became a meme now I was gonna ask
who knows what a meme is but someone
beat me to it
but according to the merriam-webster
dictionary a meme is an amusing or
interesting items such as a captions
picture of video or a jar of items
spread widely online and especially
through social media now in their
essence as I said memes are just funny
pictures matched up with funny texts and
I know this is not a very poetic
definition but I’ve come to find that my
ideas or means are a little more
open-minded than most people because I
believe that memes can be poetry and I
will do my absolute best to take you
along my train of thought because I know
it sounds like a stretch at this point
no I was surprised as a literature
student that memes were not being
discussed in an academic field because
they’re only present online they’re
everywhere so I was really surprised
about that so I took it for myself and
wrote my thesis on the more poetic
aspects of memes and got some of that
academic research started or so I hope
now it seems that memes are not being
discussed because people feel like memes
are ordinary
so they can possibly be poetry but I am
here to tell you that it is possible and
I’ll show you how during the Middle Ages
and antiquity even before that poetry
was enjoyed as a group event so one
person was reading them out loud or
performing it a group of people were
watching or listening and afterwards
there was a group discussion about what
it might mean and what it made people
feel like which is very different from
how we experience poetry today it’s more
a solitary thing now let’s compare the
old-time way of reading poetry to memes
shall we a facebook meme one person
reading it or post as some one person
posting it and making it a group of
people listening is a lot of people
retweeting we sharing reblogging re
whatever showing that they’ve read and
enjoyed it and group discussion can be
compared to a comment section people
writes about what it made them feel like
if it made them angry very often people
get offended by it so it really sparks
emotion so it seems that you can compare
the basics of poetry to the basics of
memes but does this mean that means our
poetry at this point I wasn’t convinced
yes I’m sure you’re not convinced as
well and I continued my research which
brought me to the question what is
poetry in the academic field this is one
of the big questions and through this we
don’t know we don’t have a conclusive
definition as to what is makes poetry
different from any other random texts
but we do however have a number of
characteristics that are applying to
poetry and I will be comparing four of
those characteristics to memes for you
today now first of all and the most
important one of all is poetic language
poetry bends the rules of grammar to
make it suit is chosen rhyme rhythm and
format for example our beams be mock to
the soul to remain like April hora
spread it’s beautiful it’s pompous it’s
really difficult and people don’t like
it
but the same can be said about language
play of means this is the Doge meme one
of the older most popular memes
I’m sure everyone has seen the shiba inu
kind of dog and you can see that the
characteristics of this meme are
fragmented short sentences wrongful use
of Gremory and words like wow to apply a
more animal type way of train of
thoughts to it and if you compare this
use of grammar to other animal memes
even dog memes you’ll find that they use
a different type of grammar so it seems
that grammar or poetic language defines
poetry but it also defines memes a
second characteristic is a visual aspect
in the Middle Ages a lot of texts are
illustrators or illuminated with
beautiful decorations around the edge
and this is no purely decorative very
often there is symbolism or context or
references to other texts from the same
era
and it makes the read so much more
interesting data ism is a more recent
example as you can see in this example
this is one of the most famous paper
poems by Valvano style called circus and
you can see how the visual and textual
are one unit you cannot separate the two
to make sure it’s a different or it’s a
different poem the same for example for
this increasingly verbose meme the image
is getting more and more childlike but
the text is getting more and more
complex so they do the complete opposite
but both enhance the meaning or the joke
in this case a third characteristic is a
political or satirical play very famous
here is the phone nervosa and out of the
story which uses the Front’s of a
fictional animal story to critique Qing
society and religion which is no minor
feet in a thirteenth century a lot of
memes can be made political very easily
as well this is an example of the gun
meme and the gun meme you add the word
gun to any random sentence
it’s a non-existing punchline it’s
ridiculous but hysterical in my personal
opinion but if you add gun to the right
sentence you get a political play or a
reference to the ongoing gun gun control
debates which is pretty heavy in the
United States so it seems that memes are
very easily made political depending on
the intention of the maker and
fourth and final characteristic is
absurdism absurdism is a broad spectrum
and you can see how in Dadaism they use
absurdism to get people engaged if you
read this it means nothing
it really doesn’t there’s no meaning but
if you read out loud and you use your
vocalization you play around with the
language a little bit you get something
there or there might be something there
so data is to enjoy it absurd isn’t to
get people involved but memes prefer to
use absurdism in the sense of the core
gesture in the Middle Ages who was the
only one who could critique his King
because everything he said was
considered a joke and if it’s a joke
it’s not hurting anyone right now
what I want you to take away from this
talk is this first of all we’ve we’ve
seen the memes have poetical language a
visual aspect a political and satirical
play and absurdism this made me conclude
that memes are a new branch of poetry
and confirm my beliefs that poetry is
still evolving to this day it is still
able to express new emotions express
critique and address difficult topics
it’s also interesting to note that this
movement is made almost entirely out of
young adults and teenagers but that’s a
different talk altogether so I want you
to remember the next time you see you me
first of all you know what it is
second of all if you see one that sparks
your interest in some way maybe read it
again consider there might be more there
than you thought was possible and
perhaps consider that memes can be a new
poetic way to express your personal
feelings and express your critique on
society or the status quo and even
address the topics that are sometimes
very difficult to talk about thank you
very much
[Applause]
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