The problem has been that writing poetry (or writing in general) is a labor-intensive activity that has required focused time and energy. The My Poetic Life app solves this issue using simple prompts and then generating the poem automatically. The app generates the poem, stores the poem and rereads the poem back to the participant. Underpinning the production and design of this app is 20 years of research on poetry reading and writing. The prompts are designed around tested techniques of eliciting biographical information and transforming it into poetic form. The value of autobiographical poetry reading is well documented and contributes to personal reflection, well-being and aesthetic appreciation.
My Poetic Life evolved from a collaboration between Prof. David I. Hanauer (an applied linguist expert on the psycholinguistic aspects of poetry reading and writing) and Glenn Anderson (an experienced programmer). The core idea of the My Poetic Life app is to provide people with the option of poetically appreciating their life experiences using a simple verbal interface. At the moment, ways of recording life experiences are more attuned to the storage of photographs possible organized into visual narratives. Little has been done with simple methods of storing experiences in verbal form. The My Poetic Life App offers a unique experience which is aimed to be parallel to photographic life storage apps such as Instagram, Flickr or Facebook. Poetry is the perfect format for storing this form of information as it offers a quick, emotionally laden memory that can be shared and offers personal insight.
Selected references
Hanauer, D. I. (2016). Beauty judgements of non-professional poetry: Regression analyses of authorial
attribution, emotional response and perceived writing quality. Scientific Study of Literature, 5 (2): 183-199.
Hanauer, D. I. (2015). Measuring voice in poetry written by second language learners. Written
Communication, 32 (1): 66-86.
Hanauer, D. I. (2014). Being in the Second Iraq War: A poetic ethnography. Qualitative Inquiry, 21 (1):
83-106.
Hanauer, D. I. (2014). Being in the Second Iraq War: A poetic ethnography. Qualitative Inquiry, 21 (1):
83-106.
Hanauer, D. I. (2014). Appreciating the beauty of second language poetry writing. In D. Disney (ed.) Exploring Second Language Creative Writing (pp. 11-22). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Hanauer, D. (2011). Meaningful literacy: Writing poetry in the language classroom. Language Teaching: Surveys and Studies, 45 (1), 105-115.
Hanauer, D. (2010). Poetry as Research: Exploring Second Language Poetry Writing.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins
Hanauer, D. (2003) Multicultural moments in Poetry: The importance of the unique. Canadian
Modern Language Review, 60 (1), 27-54.
Elster, C., & Hanauer, D. (2002) Voicing Texts, Voices around Texts: Reading poems in elementary school classrooms. Research in the Teaching of English.37 (1), 89-134.
Hanauer, D. (2001a) The task of poetry reading and second language learning. Applied Linguistics 22(3), 295-323
Ravid, D.,& Hanauer, D. (1998). A prototype theory of rhyme. Cognitive Linguistics, 9 (1), 79-106
Hanauer, D. (1998c). The genre-specific hypothesis of reading: Reading poetry and reading encyclopedic items. Poetics 26 (2), 63-80
Hanauer, D. (1998b). The effect of three literary educational methods on the development of genre knowledge: The case of postmodern poetry. Journal of Literary Semantics, 27 (1), 43-57.
Hanauer, D. (1998a). Reading poetry: An empirical investigation of Formalist, Stylistic and Conventionalist Claims. Poetics Today 19, 565-580.
Hanauer, D. (1997d). Reading literature and the world of multi-literacies The place and function of literature in the next millennium. SPIEL.16, 152-155.
Hanauer, D. (1997c). Poetic text processing. Journal of Literary Semantics 26 (3), 157-172.
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