Vindictive Poetry
October 12th, 2008 by 
admin
I wrote a lot of bad poetry in high school.
It wasn’t the sort of thing that ‘everyone was doing’. There was about four of us in my year level that wrote poems for fun. Every year, there was a ‘Poetry Competition’ and this ‘young author’ who wrote some fiction book about surfing was invited to judge the poems. they were supposed to have a new judge every two years, but never got around to replacing him.
I didn’t have a high opinion of this fellow. He was all about encouraging us to be writers and I’d already written the first draft of my first book at that time, as bad as it was in hindsight. I found him pretentious and a waste of time.
What was worse was that this surfer dude did not have the same likes as me when it came to writing or poetry. When I wrote something I thought was good, it was dismissed without a second thought. The poems I didn’t like, he ended up liking most. I was rather indiscriminant with my poems, submitting everything I had written that year to the competition. It was about 20 pages for the sucker to sift through, sometimes with two poems on a page.
One year, in my adolescent frustrations, I wrote a poem directed at him. I did it to be mean, harsh, and to show my distaste. I can remember writing the first sentence, which was really all I wanted to say, and then thinking “Now what will rhyme with this?” because if didn’t make it rhyme then it was really just a mean note.
The poem turned out rather bad…
Pride
If I wrote about surfing
Would that let me win this year?
If I painted words for a subject I did not like
And ignored what I held dear?
If I bent myself to fit the mould
For sure I’d break my back,
But my words would never feel right
It’s sincerity and love they’d lack.
Perhaps not love for the subject,
But a love for seeing what’s real;
For the truth, for the work itself
The art of remembering how to feel.
And the bugger loved it. I won that year with the worst poem I had ever written, and the poem featured above, intended to insult the judge, was given an ‘honorable mention’ and the only poem mentioned in the judges review.
It’s because I mentioned surfing.
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October 12th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
What a sucky lesson to learn so young. Kissing up will get you all!
Gah. People and our egos…
October 12th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
There’s a lesson somewhere there for me..
October 12th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
Actually, I think the poem is wonderful and the judge perhaps saw ‘that’, not the mention of surfing at all
IMHO!
October 13th, 2008 at 12:26 am
Theres a lesson to be learned for me too..
October 13th, 2008 at 3:54 am
Be an individual or do what makes others happy…. I vote for being outside the box!
October 13th, 2008 at 4:06 am
Thats…hilarious. Perhaps he thought you were just messing with him rather then being serious.
October 13th, 2008 at 7:17 am
Perhaps he had a sadistic streak and was trying to provoke you into writing something caustic. Life is funny sometimes!
October 13th, 2008 at 7:48 am
Actually I liked the poem, but funny that your intent when submitted was rewarded in the end.
October 13th, 2008 at 8:32 am
It is ironic how things work.
October 13th, 2008 at 8:47 am
Now I’m not defending the guy, I know nothing about him except your thoughts and feelings, but maybe, just maybe he voted yours #1 (even though you did not think it your best work) because you wrote with passion? You may have hated his guys, but you wrote a poem filled with feeling - even if it was anger. Just a thought, maybe he was waiting for someone to do just that… Or he was an idiot LOL! You choose.
October 13th, 2008 at 8:48 am
BTW, typo… not hated his guys - should be hated his guts LOL!
October 13th, 2008 at 9:33 am
At least something good came out of it.
October 13th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Ha! that is crazy. Did he have a background at all that made him a worthy judge?
October 13th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
He’d written a novel- not really anything to do with poetry. Considering other winners were poems written for english I didn’t think much or his ability to assess creativity.
October 13th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
I actually think the poem is quite good.
October 13th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
I have to agree. I liked the poem too!
October 14th, 2008 at 3:20 am
We like it, too! Mom writes Haiku and one of our Aunties writes Haiku and other forms of poetry. They both say to always please yourself. Writing is very subjective, and if you write to please yourself you will always know that at least one person loved it!
October 14th, 2008 at 3:31 am
I’ve learned a long time ago that any kind of critics are always only personal opinion - and biased.
Therefore, it doesn’t matter what anyone says about your creations. If your heart tells you to write (or paint, sing etc.) - go for it!
October 14th, 2008 at 8:24 am
That’s the trouble with literature of all types, it’s so subjective. I’ve always thought that in school it would totally depend on what the teacher personally liked or disliked, not whether you’d done the job right. I also agree as to the poem, it is good
October 14th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Nice Post. I would say your poem has merit. If that was your worst, I need to seek out your best.
Beamer
October 15th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
I wrote a stupid poem once in high school. I really didn’t like my english class and I had put off doing this particular assignment because I though it was dumn…I was a teenager, everything was dumn when it came to school. Anyway, I wrote this poem in about 5 minutes just to get it done and the darn teacher LOVED it and had me read it in front of the whole class! AUGGG! It was some stupid poem about a cat dropping from a plain…she liked my word-play I guess. So I say a poem is a poem and let the audience decide if they like it.
October 16th, 2008 at 9:06 am
I vote for being yourself - always!
October 17th, 2008 at 9:54 am
I have read worse poems, but since it was intended to flame the judges, it is ironic how it was chosen. Were the poems drawn from a hat?
October 22nd, 2008 at 12:41 pm
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October 25th, 2008 at 7:33 am
I think the poem has a spark all right and the vindictiveness/passion is what’s there.