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A new accolade has been launched for those who espouse poetry in 140 characters. Hay Festival is searching for the most 'beautiful tweet', which can be evocative, eloquent, or a good pun.

Twitterers can enter their own beautiful tweets or nominate those of their friends by sending a tweet to @hayfestival before 4 June. The contest will be judged by Twitterati veteran Stephen Fry, who will also be speaking on the final day of the literary festival to promote the next volume of his memoir. Fry famously quit Twitter temporarily in order to finish the book in question.

'We were very keen to embrace social media this year,' says Benjamin Webb, managing director of Deliberate PR, which handles PR for the Hay Festival, held in Hay-on-Wye, Powys. 'We wanted to come up with an idea that would work well in social media but would also look at the way in which social media can aid creative writing and thought.

'[The competition] is about the use of language: brevity can be conducive to creativity.'

Twitter has already been put to good use in previous years by attendees, not just to tweet about their festival experiences, but to plan their journeys or organise car sharing to get to the event - environmental consciousness underpins the festival.

However, this is the first time the festival organisers have sought to encourage participation through social media in this way. It is all part of what Webb sees as the natural growth of the annual event, from its origins as a book festival, to an arts festival encompassing all areas of culture, from politics to entertainment - and now social media. Speakers this year include renowned playwright Tom Stoppard and former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf.

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