Spoetry 

What is Spoetry?

It is unknown as to when the first spoem was started as several writers and 

bloggers have claimed to have created the form. However, it is estimated that 

the idea began in 1999 as Satire Wire [1] held their first spam poetry writing 

contest in 2000 [2]. Animator Don Hertzfeldt began writing spam poems in his 

production journal in 2004 [3]. Translator Jorge Candeias wrote a 鈥渟poem鈥?a day 

during a whole year, between the 5th of May 2003 and the 5th of May 2004, using 

spam subject lines as title and inspiration; these are in Portuguese, based on 

spam bylines mostly in English [4].

A book entitled Machine Language by endwar was published in 2005 by IZEN and was 

followed by Machine Language, Version 2.1 also by endwar in 2006. The latter 

edition includes a CD of spoetry read by Microsoft Sam and set to ambient 

musical sounds by Michael Truman who also tweaked the automated readings. Each 

edition indicates endwar as editor, but in the second edition he has admitted to 

using cut-up technique and having combined shorter pieces from the first 

edition, which lends more authorship to him in his creation. These pieces were 

also read at the opening of Blends & Bridges, a concrete and visual poetry show 

at Gallery 324 in Cleveland, Ohio, on April 1, 2006, by endwar with the sounds 

by Truman backing. The experimental poet, endwar, cites his own collaboration 

with Ficus Strangulensis, the experimental poet, in 1995, The Further Last Words 

of Dutch Schultz published by IZEN as an earlier experiment in generating random 

text poetry, in this case, the software altered text of the bizarre last words 

of Dutch Schultz as published in The New York Times in 1935, as well as the 

cut-up influences of Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs and even the musicians 

Throbbing Gristle and David Bowie.[1] The useful bits of spam for purposes of 

endwar's variation of spoetry, i.e., the part that is not the advertisement, but 

the random words assigned to trick spam filters, endwar calls "paratext". 

Interestingly, endwar indicates that, in his view, "the effect of the evolution 

of paratext is that computers are learning to talk to each other by in some 

sense imitating human texts." [2] The advertisements are the human-to-human 

conversation in the same email sources.

A book entitled 'Spam: E-mail Inspired Poems' by Ben Myers was published in 2008 

by Blackheath Books [5] Myers claims to have been writing spam poems since 1999.

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; 

making the creation of spoetry an exercise not in creativity as much as in 

having an eye for the unexpected.

The end result can be crafted into any literary form the author desires: haiku, 

concrete poetry, limerick, dada, and so on. Thus, spoetry is not a literary form 

but rather a means of creating poetry.

[edit] Examples

Several examples of poetry created from spam can be found across the Internet.

What Can You Do in 3 Minutes?

Look out your window

Make a child happy

Groom those bushy eyebrows

Get residency in Panama

Lose 10 lbs.

Remove dents

Pupate

Haiku Style:

Santa Claus catholic

Looking for medications

Your stocking stuffer

Smoking is harmful!

I do it because its fun

White Teeth Guaranteed

Memo: to My Pets

I know what you are doing

No, oh, that's just wrong