A Mini-Review of Arabic Poetry Meter Classification

Poetry is an important art form in human history. Many poems have been written to share emotions, express pride or gratitude, declare or resolve conflicts, among others. Writing good poetry requires expertise. Understanding the structure of a poem helps poets better choose words and phrases that reflect their ideas. Identifying the meter of a poem helps in teaching new poets the different compositions they have at their disposal while also providing an easy way for professionals to detect broken poetry. This work investigates various efforts from the literature that tackled poetry meter classification, focusing on poetry written in Arabic. Different gaps in research have been identified including the need for proper analysis on the effects of diacritization on individual meters, the limited amount of research in spoken poetry due to scarce public datasets, and the need of further investigations regarding similar and rare poetry meters. We conclude with recommendations for dataset creation and modeling strategies to close these gaps and outline directions for future research in Arabic poetry meter classification.