Harnessing Constraint Programming for Poetry Composition

Abstract

Constraints are a major factor shaping the conceptual space of many areas of creativity. We propose to use constraint programming techniques and off-the-shelf constraint solvers in the creative task of poetry writing. We show how many aspects essential in different poetical forms, and partially even in the level of language syntax and semantics can be represented as interacting constraints. The proposed architecture has two main components. One takes input or inspiration from the user or the environment, and based on it generates a specification of the space and aesthetic of a poem as a set of declarative constraints. The other component explores the specified space using a constraint solver. We provide an elementary set of constraints for composition of poetry, we illustrate their use, and we provide examples of poems generated with different sets of constraints.