Audaciously Awful Entries Expected for WT’s Bad Poetry Contest Feb. 27

Copy by Chip Chandler, 806-651-2124, cchandler@wtamu.edu

CANYON, Texas — The world’s most heinous haikus and more are sought for the 2025 West Texas A&M University Bad Poetry Contest, presented by Brick & Elm magazine.

The event will begin at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 27 in the Sybil B. Harrington Fine Arts Complex Recital Hall on WT’s Canyon campus.

“William Butler Yeats once wrote that the worst are full of passionate intensity. Once a year, Brick and Elm magazine and WT’s Department of English, Philosophy and Modern Languages team up to celebrate the passionate intensity of everyone's poetic flops, failures, miscues, and parodies,” said Dr. Matthew Harrison, WT’s Wendy and Stanley Marsh 3 Professor of Shakespeare.

Participants—either WT-affiliated or from the general public—should bring two or three original poems. Audience members also are welcome to simply enjoy, to use that word loosely, the readings.

Submissions in the past have ranged from cowboy poetry to off-kilter rants, perfectly metrical gems to a barely rhyming list of diseases found in cattle. Poets are asked to keep their material in the PG-13 range.

“This is one of my favorite events of the year. Not just because it celebrates mediocrity—which we can all get behind—but because it's multi-generational,” said Jason Boyett, cofounder of Brick & Elm Magazine and host/creator of the Hey Amarillo podcast. “You have college students in the same room as professionals, and 20-year-old literature majors competing successfully against published poets and authors. Also, you're as likely to hear a sonnet about poop as a sonnet about unrequited love. It's a hilarious and chaotic couple of hours."

The event is held by the Department of English, Philosophy and Modern Languages in WT’s Sybil B. Harrington College of Fine Arts and Humanities.

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 One West comprehensive fundraising campaign, which reached its initial $125 million goal 18 months after publicly launching in September 2021. The campaign’s new goal is to reach $175 million by 2025; currently, it has raised more than $160 million.

About West Texas A&M University

WT, a Regional Research University, is redefining excellence in Canyon, Texas, on a 342-acre residential campus, as well as the Harrington Academic Hall WTAMU Amarillo Center in downtown Amarillo. 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 more than 9,000 and offers 66 undergraduate degree programs, including eight associate degrees; and 44 graduate degrees, including an integrated bachelor’s and master’s degree, a specialist degree 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.

—WT—