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I decided to take as a title the most neutral view of the relationship between poetry and the media.

One can imagine all kinds of relationship between these two modes of creative expression: poetry versus the media, poetry as the media, poetry in the media, poetry without the media, poetry of the media, poetry on the media, poetry is the media, poetry outside the media, etc...

One can write volumes and volumes on the interactions between the two. But let us just touch on some of them, starting with the basics - the aims of poetry and the media (understood here as news-oriented media).

There's a well-known theory in the field of psychology about the inversely proportional relationship between information and emotions. The more information is available, the less the emotions are aroused and the other way around.

Does new technology have the potential to transform poetry?

This theory could explain the fundamental opposition between poetry and journalism or the media, since the latter is predominantly about information and the former is mainly about emotions.

This apparent opposition makes the appearance of poetry in newspapers, news bulletins or other traditional media seem incongruous, although not quite an impossibility.

Both sides could potentially lean towards each other: poetry could be newsy or topical, and the media could use the fruits of poetry for its own benefit. Think of the jingles used in corporate advertising, creative magazines or newspaper headlines, but also of the much more representative treatment of subjects that you see in movies (such as 'Shakespeare in Love' or the films of Andrei Tarkovsky).

I do recall once reading a discussion examining which was more truthful during the conflict in Northern Ireland - media articles or the poetry of Seamus Heaney.

But all in all, one must admit that conventional media and poetry are not the best of friends and so to answer the question "Should there be room for poetry in the media and why?" I think we had better turn our attention to so-called new media.

The explosion of new media and especially of social media has given a new life to the rather strained relationship between poetry and the media.

If the relationship between poetry and the media in the traditional sense was characterised as poetry versus the media, the rise of the internet and social media has allowed it to rise to all the other forms like poetry as the media, poetry in the media, poetry without the media, poetry of the media, poetry on the media, poetry is the media, poetry outside the media, etc...

Leaving aside web publishing, which has made poetry instant and ubiquitous - sometimes to a painful and harmful extent - new media has also created new forms of poetry based on technologies which explore a new syntax of linear and non-linear animation, hyperlinking, interactivity, real-time text generation, spatiotemporal discontinuities, self-similarity, synthetic spaces, immateriality, diagrammatic relations, visual tempo, biological growth and mutation, multiple simultaneities and many other innovative procedures.

The latest developments in what I've seen in this area are the - a series of poems written and designed to be read on touchscreen devices, from large-scale exhibition surfaces to mobile screens. New terms and poetic concepts like holo-poetry, digital poetry, biopoetry and space poetry have also recently emerged.

In the words of their creators, "This media poetry, although defined within the field of experimental poetics, departs radically from the avant-garde movements of the first half of the twentieth century, and the print-based approaches of the second half. Through an embrace of the vast possibilities made available through contemporary media, the artists in this anthology have become the poetic pioneers for the next millennium."

Some of them have even claimed that "social media is poetry in motion. It is a symphony of various content and platforms all working together. Each platform with a different pace, tone and frequency that resonates a message of harmony."

Poetry has always been about the ultimate creativity of mankind. Maybe now, as it moves from the enchained physical world of the pen, ink and paper to the virtual world of digits and electronics it may find itself moving in a more natural way from the status of Object to Event.