Adverse days for verse in the age of Twitter and Facebook? But things don't look too promising for poetry as attention spans become squeezed and social media concertinas content. There have, however been some noble efforts to create excitement around poetry across social media. Earlier this year, The New York Public Library initiated the National Poetry Contest on Twitter where people could send three poetic tweets but the third tweet had to centre around the city of New York, reading, books or libraries. In the spirit of the times, the winner received a free set of poetry books, but more importantly, those tweets were shared between more than a million followers during National Poetry Month. And then there is always Google. As reported by in these technology pages almost two years ago, Google Poetics takes the four suggestions that the Google search box provides when a query is typed in and treats them as a poem. Let's just say a digital and updated version of William Burroughs" cut-up technique and machine. When I crowdsourced this subject on Twitter asking for quotes, the replies were passionate and (occasionally) funny. Naturally I'd missed the obvious gag, the Twitterverse, but others rightly pointed out that poetry is poetry, whether it is long or short form, analogue or digital, 1800s, 1960s or 2010s. One respondent, Twitmericks even came up with this: A poet who does it in tweets Requires unnatural feats To Keep Twitter verse Acceptably terse It wasn't demanded of Keats. Moving on, I'd argue that Bob Dylan's amazing Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie cannot be compared with anything by Eminem, but conversely I much prefer work by Derek Walcott and Linton Kwesi Johnson to that of Milton and Virgil. Poetry is in the eye of each particular beholder, but it has a might that is as powerful as the other arts. Just about everybody can remember the words of a poem that has inspired them, a limerick that has amused them or have had a go at writing their own stuff. So, the next poetic genius of our times may well come from the Twitterverse or maybe a looped word-version of Vine will supplant the relatively long form of social media updates, but there's one thing that they won't be and that is a better poet than Seamus Heaney. RIP Seamus Heaney, a great poet and a giant of a man.