Tamil language is known for its classical literature, especially the poetic forms built using exotic syntactic and semantic structure. The two most widely referenced books on Tamil Poetry grammar are Yapperungalakkarigai and Thandialangaram. I have had the pleasure of studying both as a High School student a few decades ago. They still continue to amaze me!
Just as Tamil poetry, English poetry too has a well defined structure. Most of us will be familiar with Haiku, but there are other intricate and complex forms including Sestina, Villanelle, Pantoum, etc.
What if we try to apply Tamil poetry grammar to English poems and vice versa? Sounds like an interesting idea, isn’t it? I wanted to explore this and took the help of ChatGPT.
In this article, I will share examples of English poetry created using Tamil grammar.
To start with, I asked ChatGPT to craft an English poem having two stanzas, four lines in each stanza, where each line adheres to this structure: Nerasai-Niraiasai-Niraiasai-Nerasai-Nerasai-Niraiasai (நேர் அசை – நிரை அசை – நிரை அசை – நேர் அசை – நேர் அசை – நிரை அசை).
Looks good to me!
Let us make it a little more complex now. Here is my prompt:
Create a poem that follows Sestina structure and uses Vanja Pugazchi Ani as defined in Thandialangaram.
Here is what it created:
Quite interesting! Vanja Pugazhchi Ani uses “sarcasm” to convey an idea.
Here is the final prompt:
Create a 4 stanza Haiku that employs Sol Virodha Ani :
Here is the Poem:
As might be obvious, this poem uses “contradictory” expressions (e.g. Silent thunder), which is what Sol Virodha Ani means.
Honestly, when I started this experiment, I was a bit skeptical as to the model’s capabilities regarding this kind of problem solving. I will now admit it has more than met my expectations!
In case you are wondering which model I used for this interaction, it is “o1-Preview”. Of course, it took several seconds before responding each time, but that is expected behavior.
I hope you found this blend of Tamil and English poetic devices quite interesting! Do give it a try.
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