The Bad Poetry Seminar
The History of Bad Poetry
First let us consider the history of bad poetry.
Luckily, this history is not so long. Originally, all poems were good. For example, all the Icelandic epics are good. (You may not like them, but trust me, they're good.) The Vedas, Homer, Gilgamesh, The Bible, The Egyptian Book Of The Dead, are all good.
(It's possible, of course, that a lot of awful Icelandic epics were written and later forgotten, because they were so bad, but I doubt it. Do you know how Sappho's poems survive? Because they were used to wrap mummies with, in Egypt. That's why they exist in fragments, because they were torn into strips, to wrap the mummies with. My point is that the fucking mummies were wrapped in great poetry! There just wasn't that much bad poetry then.)
Bad poetry was invented in 1810, in Dovershire, England, by Reginald Sporson, a curate and minor rugby coach. The first bad poem was “The Dawn Upon the Lily,” which consisted of two short stanzas, the second far worse than the first. Sporson went on to write for 35 years, and birthed the first wave of bad poetry. By 1847, there were 119 bad poets writing in Great Britain. Bad poetry quickly emigrated to America, France, Portugal, Spain, Argentina, Norway, Nigeria, Turkey, Canada, Lebanon, Bolivia, Ghana and Mexico, in that order. The last place bad poetry reached was China (in 1894).
Bad poetry has a simple genesis: people who are not poets write poems. Before 1810, it never occurred to anyone who wasn't a poet to write a poem. People believed in the “Muse”, a mysterious force that overtook the conscious mind, and forced it to write poetry. Reginald Sporson denied the existence of the Muse, and his theory has eventually taken hold: now no one (outside of Western Pakistan) believes in the Muse. Everyone thinks they can be a poet. That's why there is more bad poetry than ever before.
So join with us! Fuck the Muse! Every man a poetess! Every woman a poet!*
* Notice the non-sexist language.
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