ScienceOnline 2012 and the connections I made through it continue to inspire me. On Wednesday, April 11, @BoraZ, one of the Science Online organizers, tweeted a link to a website that described Spoetry, poetry made from spam. Spam poetry purists look for the poetry written by the spammers, but I’m taking a slightly different approach to spoetry. I want to turn spam into “art” (I use the term “art” loosely.) For quite sometime I have maintained a running file of some of the more entertaining spam comments that have come across the Promega Connections blog and through my Promega email account, but I haven’t quite known what to do with them. Sort of like the plastic applesauce containers I save; they seem like they should be useful, for something…
I have tweeted at least one spam email that I received: “Just got spam email for a lyophilization webinar. Can you imagine how dry that would be?”
Spam is such a waste of time and electrons. Time because we have to create filters to manage it and then recreate filters to manage the spam that gets through the filters we created. Electrons, well because it’s cyberspace.
But I’m an earthy girl, committed to “Reduce, Reuse and Recycle”.
So, I’ve reduced spam with filters on the Promega Connections blog and rules on my email accounts: I don’t see a lot of the spam.
But what about reuse and recycle? I can only come up with one-liners for a few spam remarks. But spoetry…therein lies real possibility. I can write lots of bad poetry using spam.
So now, thanks to Bora, I know what I can do with all that unused spam. Spoetry. My apologies to our readers, but this was fun.
If you want to try some spoetry, but are not at all a poet, you can play with the instant poetry forms from the education technology training center or the Random Spoetry Generator at spoetry.org. Have fun playing with your spam, and if you want, share your spoetry in the comments section. We would love to hear from you.
Cinquain
Posting
Make a great point
Share with my social net
One of the best bloggers I saw
Weblog
Haiku
Site Has given me
Inspiration to succeed
For some reason, Thanks
William Carlos William Tribute Poem
Plagairism
This is just to say
I have copied
the blog
that was on
the website
and which
you were probably saving
for your first book
Forgive me
it was fabulous
so inspiring
and so tempting
Spine Poems
(In a spine poem, each line of the poem begins with the word of a book title.)
Bertil Hille’s Ionic Channels of Excitable Membranes
Say What?
Ionic columns towering above, scrolls forming
Channels of worship for the Greek Gods, better defined than the Gods
Of today. Just more believable—a Gods controlling each part of the universe
Excitable in their humanity. Their emotions resonating like tympanic
Membranes struck with a mallet.
Rachel Carson, The Sea Around Us
Phishy
The credit report score you requested is adrift at
Sea, but if you click on this link and look
Around, you will see we are not phishers, trust
Us.
Other spoetry resources
Michele Arduengo
