I've helped to put together this little event for the Singapore Writers Festival Fringe. It'll be on 21 October, 8:30pm, at the SMU Steps. Basically, we were programmed in the middle of a bunch of acts extolling the virtues of poetry, so we've decided to create an event where we ritually execute bad poems instead.
Help us make the event a success by uploading some bad poems on the Facebook page!
https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=232728086778744&ref=ts
WE WANT BAD POEMS! PLEASE POST THE WORST OFFENDERS BELOW!
A time of reckoning is upon us. Bad poetry must die!
For too long, we have tolerated its presence in our libraries, bookstores, schools and festival programs. We have been tortured by its slipshod rhythms; we have been oppressed by its tyranny in literature syllabuses. We have been scandalized by the repugnant politics of some of its texts – why, some of the damned things just won’t stay banned!
But just as a good poem should be praised, a bad poem deserves to be punished. (Never mind subjectivity – we’re readers, dammit, we know what we like!)
We have therefore resolved to hold a series of bloody executions, so that these miserable verses may die for their sins. And we look to you, the audience, to nominate those worthy of death.
So from now until 14th October, we ask you to post bad poems on this wall, along with your accusations thereof (e.g. banal rhyming, flaccid imagery, inciting civil unrest). You may also submit poems that you feel have been wrongfully charged as 'bad' and deserve a fairer trial in public.
At our event on 21st October, your poems shall either be acquitted or found guilty as charged. You will have the power to choose their fate: whether they enjoy a swift and painless death or suffer the agony of disemvowelment, or worse.
Let the killing begin!
1 comment:
"Ulysses by the Merlion" by Edwin Thumboo
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