What is Spoetry?

Spoetry is a portmanteau of spam and poetry, or more specifically, poems that are inspired by spam e-mail. The subject matter of spoems can vary from mortgage loans, real estate and Viagra Online deals to surreal verbosity akin to stream of consciousness. Since 1999, many bloggers and writers have taken credit for this new form of 'art', but the reality is that spoetry has its roots in a time where the internet didn't even exists. Instrumentally, Lou Reed recorded Metal Machine Music in 1975, a collage of guitar feedback and distortion, that is deemed either an artistic statement or one big joke.

Earlier, a 1971 David Bowie song called Moonage Daydream was written using the cut-up method, a 1920's dada technique popularized by 1950's poets Bryon Gysin and William Burroughs, in which they chopped up other texts and then rearranged the words at random to try and come up with a whole new entity. For instance, Gysin applied the cut-up method to Arthur Rimbaud's poems to develop new works enhanced by his own words, while Burroughs used it in several parts of his novels.

Nowadays, the subject lines of spam mail, and even the content is being used to create all kinds of poetry, including haikus and limericks. Ben Myers, an English novelist has even published a book called Spam: Email Inspired Poems, in 2008. However, spoetry is not a literary form per se, but a way to create poetry. Like Solomon said, there is nothing new under the sun, so while purists may dismiss this technique, we should all look on the bright side, at least it is giving spam some usefulness. As they say, a man's trash is another man's treasure.