Flarf poetry

Flarf poetry was an avant-garde poetry movement of the early 21st century. The term flarf was coined by the poet Gary Sullivan, who also wrote and published the earliest Flarf poems.^[1] Its first practitioners, working in loose collaboration on an email mailing list, used an approach that rejected conventional standards of quality and explored subject matter and tonality not typically considered appropriate for poetry. One of their central methods, invented by Drew Gardner, was to mine the Internet with odd search terms then distill the results into humorous or disturbing poems, plays and other texts.^[2]

Pioneers of the movement include Jordan Davis, Katie Degentesh, Drew Gardner, Nada Gordon, Mitch Highfill, Rodney Koeneke, Michael Magee, Sharon Mesmer, Mel Nichols, Katie F-S, K. Silem Mohammad, Rod Smith, Gary Sullivan and others.