Happy New Year

The ESRC poetry seminar series began this week in Exeter. I am co-convener. There were some excellent papers and stimulating discussion. Poems were read and written too.

One discussion I had concerned the concept of bad poems. I was interested to learn from poets and teachers of poetry what a bad poem looked like. Are there poems out there which are objectively 'bad'? Of course everyone is free to say which poems they like and which poems they think are 'good' and have value and which ones they think are not good (bad) and have no value...for them; but can a consensus be found about poems that are generally thought bad?

Is there a need to do this? There must be dangers here if we do. Being told that bad poems are out there may well contribute to the fear people have of poetry. Yet, writers and teachers of poetry often talk about bad poems, so it is in need of discussion.


Peter Sansum (1994), in his book 'Writing Poetry' says that some poems are 'tripe'. He is certain that bad poems are very common. These are poems which are some-how dishonest about the meanings they convey and how this is done and/or are full of cliche.

Seamus Cooney here ( http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/bad/index.html ) has this to say

"To achieve memorable badness is not so easy. It has to be done innocently, by a poet unaware of his or her defects. The right combination of lofty ambition, humorless self-confidence, and crass incompetence is rare and precious. (There is a famous anthology of bad poetry called The Stuffed Owl, which I recommend to those interested.)

For the student, having a genuine insight into the true badness of some poems is, I think, a necessary corollary of having a grasp of what makes good poems good."

On his web site about 'bad poetry' Cooney includes Wordsworth aand Coleridge. Cooney, playfully is looking for objective properties of bad poems.


Bad poems? Below I play with ideas.


Bad poems:
1. Poems which are written for occasions which contain language and/or are about subjects which are inappropriate to be read in particular contexts
2. Prose
3. Poems which are stated as being written in a particular form which break the rules - e.g. a ballad which is not a ballad.
4. Poems which are written by someone who has no interest in writing one and little effort has been made in its composition
5.Poems written by those who do not know what a poem is and what it can do and/or have read very little poetry.
6. A poem no one can understand
7. A poem that people know about, but no one has any interest reading
8. Poems written by those who are not genuine about writing poems. There is another motive other than poetry.
9. A poem everyone thinks is bad



None of the definitions of bad poetry above necessarily mean that the poetry produced will be considered bad by everyone. There will always be someone (with the exception of (7) and (9)) who will enjoy them, even if it is just the poet.

So, what is a good poem...? Try changing the definions above. What do you get? For example,

'Poems which are written by someone who has a huge interest in writing one and has made great effort in its composition'.

Will this produce a good poem, or just not a bad one? Or does it just increase the chances of a good poem being produced as it was with a bad poem.

I suspect the definitions of good poetry will be different in nature to definitions about bad poems.