The Bad Poetry Playgroup
"where the bar is low"

"What is Bad Poetry?" you may ask. Well, friend, if the answer matters to you, you are in the right place! Bad Poetry is a frame of mind, it's a practice, it's an approach to living based on earnest effort, humility, puns, commitment beyond reasonableness, noticing how things (verbal / visual) can rhyme, and seeing magic in relationships between things that shouldn't fit together. "Bad Poetry" frames the weird beauty of the world and asks someone else to humbly enjoy it with you.

Bad Poetry exists in many different forms and we pledge to honour it all. There is Good-Bad Poetry, Bad-Bad Poetry, and Poetry that is So Bad that, well... let's just say that we're also a support group.

We welcome and share poetry from all our members, host live events, performances, online gatherings, workshops, and a Facebook group to share our efforts.

"Bad Poetry: live in [Your Town]" is a variable length touring production from Sara Porter Productions.

Why not join us?

C O M I N G S O O N - F A L L 2 0 2 5 - S T A Y T U N E D !

William Topaz McGonagall - Scotland's Most Famous Bad Poet! and an inspiration to us all!

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ALL POETRY IS WELCOME

We put the ‘AM’ back in amateur (as in, I 'AM' writing poetry!). This is a hubris-free, safe creative zone, to share, think, talk about and play with real live actual poems. Maybe even yours... Share, listen, watch in wonder.

The only criteria is please write it yourself. But, rules are for fools, so y'know, poems...

PATRON SAINTS OF BAD POEMS

William Topaz McGonagall (March 1825 – 29 September 1902) was a Scottish poet of Irish descent. He gained notoriety as an extremely bad poet...and was rejected by the Queen herself! But he did not give up. He kept writing Bad Poetry until His Very End.

Tristanne Connelly - Canadian writer - is the author of "Loving Bad Poetry" - an article about how loving your own poetry leads to self-acceptance.

Bad Poetry Group History

The origins of The Bad Poetry Drinking Group remain obscure - as one might expect - but legend has it that the first meeting was in a pub on Dundas St West in Toronto in 2013. A group of very tired mothers needed a night out and gathered with the idea to generate bad verse, but only one person turned up with Real Efforts. (ie, see below).

The pandemic demanded creative thinking by creative people and, under the auspices of my new company, I resuscitated the group online as a way to pass the time and stay connected in a fun way to people across the country. The past few years have seen gorgeous and gory offerings of poetry from around the world.

Currently at 140 members, the online group is growing and gaining momentum! It has generated some wonderful poetry: good, touching, eloquent, arresting, heart-stopping, epic, mundane, pathetic, rambling, rare, winsome and worse. In any state, poetry is a way to share our days with one another.

Quick and dirty poems can grace any day - and sharing them is the best way to keep community alive. The stakes are low. The price is nothing. What have you got to lose? "The bar is low" and - as we like to say at The BPDG - it's getting lower all the time...

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Bad Poetry is a thing of delight

It’s not something you should try to get right.

But if you feel you really must do it,

I’ve organized something to help you get through it.

There’s rhythm and phrasing and plenty of words

That are expressive and meaningful & often don’t rhyme.

Don’t forget metaphor and the ‘like’ and the ‘as’

That make similes work, at the end of your phraaase.

There’s allusion and image and that thing called caesura,

That I don’t understand, but you probably don’t either.

And enjambment really makes my head spin

Cuz the word looks so awkward, and so is the thing

(that it does, which I won’t explain here)

I could do a kind of performative ending

But after the drinks that might be extending (myself a little too far)…

Oh! Yea! Celebrate the success of my very bad verse.

If I had some more time, I could make it much worse.

We will meet

We will share

Poetry will happen

Be there.