Grindr now has an official poet for some reason
Gay hook-up Grindr has appointed an official poet-in-residence.
Though you may not associate the world’s largest hook-up app with poetry, that’s something Max Wallis is hoping to change.
As the poet-in-residence, Wallis will craft a video poem every month that will reportedly be pushed to app users.
We’re not sure how it’ll go down with guys who are just looking for something quick and easy, but writing for the Guardian, Wallis explained he’s taking the job pretty seriously.
He explained: “You might, at this point, be wondering how much poetry can be excavated from a social networking app. A fair question although this sort of thing is not wholly new ground.
“Alain de Botton was Heathrow’s writer in residence in 2009 and managed to make the Hounslow terminal sound both glamorous and freighted with emotion.”
The poet added: “Poetry and sex have a long and venerable history, one often being used in the service of setting up the other… the truth is, there is no ‘proper’ subject for poetry. All of life is its subject. Nothing should be out of bounds.”
He added: “The poems play on the essential themes of the app – relationships, our increasingly unsympathetic world and quite a lot of sex.
“Each video threads into the next, telling a larger story about what is to be gay now (although I thought it best not to limit myself to what it means to be gay and on Grindr now – as that would mean a lot of requests to ‘send more pics’ and any number of unsolicited anatomical images).”
It’s not the first time poets have drawn inspiration from Grindr.
