Call Me the 21st-Century Ern Malley (How I Fooled the Poetry World)

(Gotteeeeem!)

Well, someone had to do it. It was inevitable.

Someone had to pick up the proverbial torch that James McAuley and Harold Stewart set down after fooling Max Harris of Angry Penguins with their fake modernist poems, the torch Michael Derrick Hudson briefly held in 2015 when he assumed the pen name of “Yi-Fen Chou” to get his infamous “Bees” poem published and, later, anthologized as one of the best of the year in 2015; the torch Peter Boghossian, James A. Lindsay, and Helen Pluckrose of the Grievance Studies Affair briefly transplanted into the social sciences with their wildly successful junk articles on feminist rewrites of Mein Kampf and queer performativity at dog parks. Someone had to seize upon the spirit of these incidents and take things a step further to test the limits of the poetry industry and just how much buffoonery it was willing to permit in the present day. (And for those of you who don’t believe the poetry world is run by weirdos and ideologues, well, I’ve got ocean-front property in the middle of Kilauea volcano with your name on it—as well as a juicy follow-up article for you soon.)

I decided that someone was me.

Throughout 2023 and 2024, I assumed a series of “attractive” pen names and as these personas sent upwards of fifty poems to English-language poetry journals the world over. Journals that ranged from respected, long-standing fixtures in the poetry landscape, to green-as-artificial-turf indie start-ups with one-man/woman/etc. editorial teams. These poems featured material that was farcical, inconsistent, inaccurate, prejudiced, and, in some cases, outright nonsensical, spanning every kind of style and subject matter seen in contemporary poetry. Some of these pieces read seriously, with minor tip-offs (e.g., “Decolonizing a stray” [The Bitchin’ Kitsch]); others contain glaring parodic elements or nonsense phrasings (e.g., “yah jah gah hah” [Tofu Ink Arts Press]; “w/stern man @ foundation” [Arteidolia]), but, fundamentally, these pieces all had one thing in common: They were trash.

The worst part: Every single poem got published.

Each poem made its way into digital and/or physical print (with the exception of one where the magazine went under [lol] before it got the chance to put “Claire Brooke Hawksmouth/Sky Child’s” beautiful work out into the world). Each poem received complimentary feedback from the accepting editors. Each poem helped build these personas up into “legitimate” industry figures and afforded them additional publishing opportunities. (Just Google “Adele Nwankwo” and see how prolific she became in a short span.) Before long, I was receiving requests from editors for additional poems. Rejections were virtually non-existent. I was being paid more for my acceptances because of my apparent BIPOC status. I was suddenly “in the loop.” Hell, I even got nominated for an international poetry award as a magazine’s top recommendation of the year.

While this was already enough to thoroughly dunk on the industry, I figured if I was already here, I had to go all the way and test the extent of the inherent biases of the poetry industry (because a counter-argument might have been that I was merely cherry-picking magazines, or manipulating the results or some such). To do this, I simulated the M. D. Hudson controversy by simultaneously running a test batch of poems. I took a half-dozen compositions and first sent them out under the name of a regular-seeming white guy. Then, I tallied the number of rejections I received for these poems. Next, I sent these very same poems out under my charmingly LGBTQ+ (et al.) personas to see how many rejections they might receive. Hilariously enough, and fully as expected, these same poems received next to no rejections and were all eventually accepted. The most extreme example of this was with the poem “tiktok stoic man,” which received twenty-six rejections under the regular name and only one before receiving an acceptance under my “b. h. fein” persona. In the end, none of the poems were accepted when sent under the regular name, and all were accepted with minimal rejections when sent under my personas.

So after succeeding with my little experiment, I figured I had to do something with this information and data. It was becoming clear to me that, while I had accomplished a fair amount up to that point under my own powers and identity, nothing would ever stack up against the sheer momentum one receives when one begins to cater to the whims and “preferences” of the industry. I, like many others in my position, could be skilled enough and dedicated enough to get into any number of literary magazines—but we’d largely remain buried under a mountain—or, in this case, a volcano—of diversity quotas, nepotism, politics, and so forth. So, to bring all of this to light, I put together a book for the disgruntled poets out there who’ve noticed similar things. I give you: Echolalia Review: An Anti-Poetry Collection.

In it you’ll find the best of the fake poems I got published, as well as a full breakdown of the ruse I’ve performed. I’ve also added some fun creative-non-fiction pieces to satirize the industry. It’s officially up on Amazon now (links below), and a free thirty-page sample is available on the Pere Ube website (https://pereube.univer.se/press). (I’m also the new EIC at Pere Ube, now that Noah’s taking a step back, so I’m excited to be revamping the mag and the press element, to create a new space for skilled, edgy artists—more on that soon.)

But because so much went into the project, I couldn’t fit everything in there. Each joke poem has a story behind it, and as much as I tried to incorporate those stories, in brief, into the manuscript, they defied total inclusion. So one of the things I intend to do with this Substack is to periodically highlight the stories behind the funniest and weirdest poems in this experiment. As well, I’ll be writing articles on the goings-on with Pere Ube, how to navigate the industry, how to create your own pen name/persona career, what the next frontiers of literature hold, and all that good stuff.

Whether we like it or not, the industry is in an absolute state, and the era of the pen name has begun. I hope you find inspiration in my experiment, and I hope it will be enough to engender change within the world of contemporary poetry. But even if it doesn’t, even if it goes ignored by those in positions of power, I hope it motivates those poets who would be disenfranchised or “left out” or misunderstood or deemed “out of touch.” You traditionalists, you malcontents, you edgelords, you arbiters, you jesters, you purists, you visionaries—this one’s most assuredly for you.

Stay tuned.

And for your viewing pleasure, here are some samples of the poems I fooled the industry with:

https://plenitudemagazine.ca/a-contemporary-tragicomedy/

https://manyworlds.place/issue-2/adele-nwankwo/

https://www.meowmeowpowpowlit.com/pup/adele-nwankwo

https://www.arteidolia.com/swifts-slows-b-h-fein-adi-n/

Bonus interview from a persona:

b. h. fein: "my gluten-free bread and vegan butter is free verse poetry"

For more, purchase Echolalia Review: An Anti-Poetry Collection today (even though Amazon’s currently fucking with my wonderful listing):

US: https://www.amazon.com/Echolalia-Review-Anti-Poetry-Jasper-Ceylon/dp/1738633926/

CAN: https://www.amazon.ca/Echolalia-Review-Anti-Poetry-Jasper-Ceylon/dp/1738633926/

UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Echolalia-Review-Anti-Poetry-Jasper-Ceylon/dp/1738633926/

(Free sample available through the listing as well.)

(And spread the word!)

Godspeed, and a Happy April Fools’ Day,

King of the Pen Names, the New Ern Malley, “Jasper Ceylon”