NEW YORK — There was expectation in the room that someone would deliver a poem as lovely as a tree. Or not. The expectation was about choosing the worst of the worst — the worst bad poem of the year.

Chances are you had to study Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” in school to examine why it’s a great poem. It’s just as likely you’ve never read William McGonagall’s “Tay Bridge Disaster,” widely ...

Julie sent in this poem her long distance boyfriend sent to her. She’s wondering if it’s awful enough to call it all off…. I walk across the dewy meadow What is that I see at the other end of the ...

Suzanne Lummis, one of Los Angeles' most venerated poets, has two new books this year. Marc Haefele talked to her about L.A. poets, Philip Levine and what makes a bad poem bad. Charles Lummis, one of ...

Writers of proudly putrescent poetry can share their work at the 2023 West Texas A&M University Bad Poetry Contest, presented by Brick & Elm magazine. The event will begin at 6:30 p.m. March 3 in the ...

Bad poems never die, never really go away: The vigor of their badness preserves them. Up they float into bad-poem limbo, ...

When I was in seventh grade, I filled up pages and pages of notebook paper with teen angst—how misunderstood I was, the color of my crush’s eyes (green, for the record), and how I dreamed of being ...

The contest was named for the poet known for “Trees,” a 12-line verse published in 1913 (“I think that I shall never see/ A poem lovely as a tree,” it begins). The Alfred Joyce Kilmer Memorial Bad ...