Co-PoeTryMe: Interactive poetry generation

Abstract

PoeTryMe is a poetry generation system that autonomously produces poems from a set of initial parameters. After using it, creative writers and other users of this system expressed the desire to partake in the creative process by directly interacting with PoeTryMe. This paper is motivated by the previous impressions. It illustrates some of the challenges of automatic poetry generation, highlights limitations of PoeTryMe, and reports on recent efforts to address user feedback and provide alternative ways of using this system. First, making some functionalities available via a web API enabled their exploitation by other systems. Those include the generation of single lines as well as retrieval of related words, allowing for additional constraints on the number of syllables, sentiment and rhyme. On top of this API, a co-creative interface, Co-PoeTryMe, has been developed. Co-PoeTryMe allows users to either start from scratch or from a generated draft. Extensive editing functionality has been incorporated, in particular, allowing lines and words to be switched or replaced by newly generated alternatives. Co-PoeTryMe, its interface and the co-creative process for producing poetry are described, along with a user study that provided useful feedback. Users pointed out the strengths of this new system, including its capacities in providing inspiration, and giving the user the ability to customize an existing draft and visualize the changes, but also pointed out weaknesses, primarily by identifying potential improvements in the user interface.