Contact: Chip Chandler, 806-651-2124, [email protected]  

CANYON, Texas — One shall not compare these poems to a summer’s day. They art fouler and more contemptuous. 

The 2022 West Texas A&M University Bad Poetry Contest, presented by Brick & Elm magazine, will take place at 6:30 p.m. March 9 in Legacy Hall inside the Jack B. Kelley Student Center on the Canyon campus. 

“We can’t all be Shakespeare, soaring to Parnassus on wings of golden verse,” said organizer Matthew Harrison, the Wendy and Stanley Marsh 3 Professor of Shakespeare. “At the Bad Poetry Contest, we celebrate that fact, embracing the bumbling poetaster in each of us.” 

Open to all, the event offers the chance for amateur versifiers to share their maladroit metaphors, mangled meter, inept elegies, vile villanelles, and other forms of frayed verse and pleasurable nonsense.  

Participants should bring two or three original poems, but reading aloud is not mandatory for the audience, said Brick & Elm publisher Jason Boyett. 

“Interaction is expected for audience members in the form of laughing, booing, groaning or sitting in embarrassed silence,” Boyett said. “Dubiously qualified judges will award prizes at the end of the competition, though ‘winning’ this event is not something you’ll want to, like, mention in polite company. Or at all.” 

Past poems have ranged from love to dental hygiene, from the beauty of Amarillo at sunset to, well, the distinctive smell of Amarillo at sunset.    

Mediocre prizes will be awarded to the best of the worst. 

Fostering an appreciation of the arts is a key mission of the University’s long-range plan, WT 125: From the Panhandle to the World. 

That plan is fueled by the historic, $125 million One West comprehensive fundraising campaign.  

About Brick & Elm  

Brick & Elm is Amarillo’s premier lifestyle magazine. Launched in 2021 by publishing veterans Michele McAffrey and Jason Boyett, this bimonthly magazine is locally owned and dedicated to this region. In addition to the print product, which delivers to subscribers and is sold across more than a dozen local newsstands, Brick & Elm publishes a free, weekly email newsletter called Brickly. Learn more at brickandelm.com. 

About West Texas A&M University 

WT is located in Canyon, Texas, on a 342-acre residential campus. Established in 1910, the University has been part of The Texas A&M University System since 1990. WT, a Hispanic Serving Institution since 2016, boasts an enrollment of about 10,000 and offers 59 undergraduate degree programs, 39 master’s degrees and two doctoral degrees. The University is also home to the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, the largest history museum in the state and the home of one of the Southwest’s finest art collections. The Buffaloes are a member of the NCAA Division II Lone Star Conference and offers 14 men’s and women’s athletics programs.