A few years back, while attending the &Now conference on innovative writing at Lake Forest College in Chicago, I was introduced to the concept of spam poetry. For some, this exercise simply takes the form of a kind of poetic version of Duchamp’s “found object”: take the spam email and, without reshaping it in any way, present it as a poem. My procedure is somewhat more invasive and is perhaps informed by the tinkering spirit of Bill Burroughs and his cut-up and fold-in methods. For starters, I only use spam messages that include prose. From the message, I make a poem using only the words or, in some cases, phrases found in the original spam. As I use a word or phrase, I erase it from the original message until what I have left is the poem that was “hidden” in the spam. From time to time I’ll post an example of this exercise here for entertainment purposes only: No Wagering!
The poems:
Ed Desautels' Maximum Fiction 
I like this exercise and especially the name; in a lit. crit. class we did something similar with error messages and pop-ups. I’ll be checking in on your updates; you are on my blogroll. All best, Dawn
Many thanks, Dawn. Ed.