The oldest surviving poem is the Epic of Gilgamesh, from the 3rd millennium BC in Sumer (in Mesopotamia, now Iraq), which was written in cuneiform script on clay tablets and, later, papyrus.
The 7th-century work Cædmon's Hymn is often considered as the oldest surviving poem in English, as it appears in an 8th-century copy of Bede's text, the Ecclesiastical History of the English People.
The oldest surviving literary work is The Epic of Gilgamesh. It was composed nearly 4,000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia (roughly equivalent to where Iraq and eastern Syria are now).
Beowulf dates to somewhere between 975 to 1025 AD. The Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, however, dates to 2150 to 1400 BC.
What we get in The Epic of Gilgamesh is a story older than the Iliad or Odyssey and older still than the earliest surviving texts for the Old Testament. The Epic of Gilgamesh, not Homer nor the Hebrew bible, is the starting-point of 'great' recorded literature.
Although, these performances could be included in those of griots. The oldest surviving speculative fiction poem is the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor, written in Hieratic and ascribed a date around 2500 B.C.E.
According to the Guinness Book of Records, the world's shortest poem is a one-letter poem by Aram Saroyan comprising a four-legged version of the letter "m".
Enheduanna has been celebrated as the earliest known named author in world history, as a number of works in Sumerian literature, such as the Exaltation of Inanna feature her as the first person narrator, and other works, such as the Sumerian Temple Hymns may identify her as their author.
Enheduanna was the world's first poet. She would write poems and edit hymnals. It is even speculated that she might have taught women at the temple to read and write. In the 1920s archaeologists discovered works by Enheduanna for the first time.
Poetry itself probably dates back to cavemen and the earliest shamans, who chronicled events in picture-stories, symbols, songs, and tales to chronicle hunts and features of the land on which these people survived.
The writer, poet and priestess composed several works of literature but is largely forgotten by the modern world. The world's first known author is widely considered to be Enheduanna, a woman who lived in the 23rd century BCE in ancient Mesopotamia (approximately 2285-2250 BCE).
With more than 220,000 (100,000 shloka or couplets) verses and about 1.8 million words in total, the Mahābhārata is the longest epic poem in the world.
devoted to one-word poems: the idea being that the poem consists of one word and a title. These are to be thought of as 2 straight lines, which make a corner (the poems will have form); while the paradox of these corners is, that they are open in all directions.
The world's oldest love poem is The Love Song for Shu-Sin (c. 2000 BCE) composed in ancient Mesopotamia for use in part of the sacred rites of fertility. Prior to its discovery in the 19th century, and its translation in the 20th, the biblical Song of Songs was thought to be the oldest love poem extant.
The earliest surviving written literature is from ancient Mesopotamia. The Epic of Gilgamesh is often cited as the first great composition, although some shorter compositions have survived that are even earlier (notably the “Kesh Temple Hymn” and “The Instructions of Shuruppak”).
Take the Epic of Gilgamesh, considered by some scholars to be the oldest surviving example of great literature. The poem is thought to have been written in approximately 2100 BC and traces back to ancient Mesopotamia.
The Mahabharata is one of the longest epic poems ever written. It has over 200,000 verse lines, 1.8 million words and it is believed that it could have taken over 600 years to write! The oldest surviving piece of text is believed to be dated from 400BCE.
Sonnet. A 14-line poem with a variable rhyme scheme originating in Italy and brought to England by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, earl of Surrey in the 16th century.
There are 300 words per minute in a 2 minute speech.
Also known as an American cinquain or the Adelaide Crapsey cinquain, this form was developed by poet Adelaide Crapsey, who wrote many examples of the form in the early 20th century. The Adelaide Crapsey cinquain poem rules are as follows: Adherence to iambic meter.
Prose pieces should be shorter than 3,500 words, simply because most magazine and journal editors don't have the room to publish long pieces. Poets should consider limiting their poems to one page—two pages at the most—when possible.
100 poems. Hyakunin isshu (One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each) is an anthology of a hundred tanka (31-syllable poems) compiled by Fujiwara no Teika in the year 1235 C.E. It is one of the best-known works in Japan, and has been translated into English by Clay MacCauley, Tom Galt, Sharman Grant, and several others.
The oldest extant printed book is a work of the Diamond Sutra and dates back to 868 CE, during the Tang Dynasty.
The earliest portion of the Bible was written over 3,500 years ago. The first five books of the Bible are attributed to Moses and are commonly called the Pentateuch (literally meaning “five scrolls”).