Genre

Spam Poetry

Lyric and Short Poetic Forms

Spam poetry, sometimes called spoetry, is poetic verse composed primarily from the subject lines or content of spam e-mail messages.

Facts

Place of Origin

Emerged online in the early 2000s, with early examples from a spam poetry competition hosted by the website SatireWire in 2000 1

Notable Example

Canadian poet Rob Read's Daily Treated Spam email series, begun in September 2003, sent spam poems to a group of subscribers 1

Defining Trait

Built by piecing together individual spam email subject lines into verse, comparable to Brion Gysin and William Burroughs's cut-up technique 1

Sources

1. Spam Poetry (Wikipedia)

Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia)

History section
Some early examples come from a spam poetry competition held in 2000 by the website Satire Wire.
Similarities to other poetry section
The creation of spoetry is similar to Gysin and Burroughs's cut-up technique in that individual subject lines of messages are pieced together in poetic form.
History section, Rob Read paragraph
Canadian poet Rob Read began writing and sending out spam poems to a group of 'subscribers' through his Daily Treated Spam email series in September, 2003.

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