Tired of Grindr conversations that starts with “What’s up”, “Hey” and “U looking”?
Maybe a few more poetic conversations are about to spring up on the dating app following Grindr’s announcement that they’ve just commissioned their first poet in residence.
Max Wallis, an award winning poet, has scored the gig and will be uploading one video poem to the app each month. You can check out a sample of his work on his Instagram page.
Writing at The Guardian Wallis said there’s always been a strong connection between poetry and sex.
“Poetry and sex have a long and venerable history, one often being used in the service of setting up the other.” Wallis said.
The author said he’d draw on inspirations from previous poets who worked in a similar space citing Lord Byron, Sharon Olds and Carol Ann Duffy.
“The poems play on the essential themes of the app – relationships, our increasingly unsympathetic world and quite a lot of sex.”
Wallis said the topics are ones that have been the subject of his last two books Modern Love and Everything Everything.
Will poetry get you chatting on Grindr?
Is poetry what people respond to on Grindr? To test the premise we sent a message to the 30 boys who were online in the vicinity of the OUTinPerth office.
We asked” Would you like to hear some poetry?”
Surprisingly nine of them got straight back to our profile which featured an image of a quill in hand.
‘Muscle Boy in Calvins’ politely turned us down with a flat “No.”, ‘XL Hot Daddy Hung Top’ expressed some confusion at the suggestion. ‘Smooth Asian Twink’ was up for some poetry, as was ‘Handsome Geek’.
Headless torso invited us to watch some of his online videos.
Those who answered were rewarded with a line from Pablo Neruda’s If You forget me.
‘Shirtless Hiker’ said the line “If little by little, you stop loving me. I will stop loving you, little by little”. was sad. ‘Middle Eastern Top’ asked what came after the poetry and ‘Handsome Scruffy Dude’ sent us back some Shakespeare.
OIP Staff
