B Is for Bad Poetry »

Pamela August Russell started off her writing career in third grade when she won a statewide short-story contest. Sometime later, she moved west to San Francisco where she created the Better Off Dead Poets Society with her partner Alison Gallant. Together, they made their way through the spoken word circuit and garnered a cult-like following. Russell was also a regular reader and host at the infamous Sister Spit in San Francisco. She has published short stories and poetry in several anthologies, including Virgin Territory and Nothing Moments. This is her first book of poetry.

Forget Shakespeare. Don’t count on Donne. Shelley and Keats: banished! And there’s absolutely no poet laureate from the golden or any other age. So fawning PhDs in love with little-understood verses by long-dead writers should go elsewhere. This is poetry for the rest of us—bad poetry!

Pamela Russell’s unexalted (but thoroughly hysterical) poems mock, chide, accuse, tease, joke, undermine, point, and laugh at the world around us—and at anything that takes itself too seriously. Her non-canonical oeuvre includes: Tea For Two (A Tragedy); Nietzsche And The Ice-Cream Truck; Capitalism Can Fall Not Like I Fell For You; Inappropriately Touched By An Angel; Love Is Like A Toilet Bowl; and many more.

Who knew bad poetry could be so good!