Furry rivals Cat and Pug have a rhyme-riddled showdown in this hilarious and delightfully quirky picture book about the joys of writing poetry—playfully imagined by the creator of social media sensation Inkpug! There once was a Pug and a Cat Who engaged in a poetic spat… Cat and Pug are each determined to become the World’s Best Poet, no matter what it takes. Whether they’re writing sonnets to sundaes or typing ballads with their butts, they will stop at nothing to outwit, out-write, and out-verse each other. But perhaps there is an even greater prize to be had: Can these two rivals discover the wonderful joy of writing…together?

Furry rivals Cat and Pug have a rhyme-riddled showdown in this hilarious and delightfully quirky picture book about the joys of writing poetry—playfully imagined by the creator of social media sensation Inkpug! There once was a Pug and a Cat Who engaged in a poetic spat… Cat and Pug are each determined to become the World’s Best Poet, no matter what it takes. Whether they’re writing sonnets to sundaes or typing ballads with their butts, they will stop at nothing to outwit, out-write, and out-verse each other. But perhaps there is an even greater prize to be had: Can these two rivals discover the wonderful joy of writing…together?

Writing very bad poetry requires talent. It helps to have a wooden ear for words, a penchant for sinking into a mire of sentimentality, and an enviable confidence that allows one to write despite absolutely appalling incompetence. The 131 poems collected in this first-of-its-kind anthology are so glaringly awful that they embody a kind of genius. From Fred Emerson Brooks' "The Stuttering Lover" to Matthew Green's "The Spleen" to Georgia Bailey Parrington's misguided "An Elegy to a Dissected Puppy", they mangle meter, run rampant over rhyme, and bludgeon us into insensibility with their grandiosity, anticlimax, and malapropism. Guaranteed to move even the most stoic reader to tears (of laughter), Very Bad Poetry is sure to become a favorite of the poetically inclined (and disinclined).

This book will leave you in silence. Whether it be from tears of laughter or from a single recurring thought: "WTF did I just read?", The Worst Poetry Book Ever, is quite literally the worst poetry book ever. I hope you like it! Or hate it!

“Never before has the delight and wonder experienced in young love, in which is implicit physical discovery, been conveyed with such touching honesty or with rhapsody so involving unconscious pathos. Those who seek to drag any honest writing through the gutters of their own minds will do the same with this. Those who are not afraid of the strange miracle of life will understand this brave verse.” —William Rose Benét

"The novelist and poet Ben Lerner argues that our hatred of poetry is ultimately a sign of its nagging relevance"--