The 140s

These are poems written within the constraint of the 140-character limit. Revelling in the compression of this constraint, Andrew Taylor’s The 140s eschews the fragmentation of social media for a journal-like sequence snapping closely observed shots of life from late Autumn into Spring. The detail in these tightly-packed poems combines the image of the haiku with the energy of Projectivism, creating some fine ambiguities along the way: ‘with poetry & chains safely stored’, ‘concrete sleeper reflection’, ‘daily heart stone.’ Fuelled by coffee and lit with sodium, this is a finely-tuned travelogue of the adventure of the everyday. (Scott Thurston)