Awkward Poetry Reading

I can't find a rhyme for that "is" on the second line yet. Bother! Now I haven't got a rhyme for "bother". Bother! Those two "bother"s will have to rhyme with each other. Buther!

— Eeyore, Winnie the Pooh

Poetry can be fun or thought-provoking, but let's face it, not everyone is good at reading it or reciting it, and this trope is about the characters who are not, but are doing it anyway.

Maybe the person wrote the poem themselves and it's bad due to trying to rhyme things that don't actually rhyme (perhaps because of the Least Rhymable Word), trying to rhyme a word with itself, not scanning, being about a very weird subject (perhaps because the poet is a Cloudcuckoolander), the poet being stupid, illiterate, Giftedly Bad, or unlucky (whether played comedically or not), pronouncing words wrong, or having unusual syntax (e.g. "Like this, this sentence is written.")

Maybe the poem is perfectly fine, but it's the wrong audience (for instance, a Goth reading a dark poem to a class full of little kids). Maybe the person is excessively nervous (usually due to Performance Anxiety though sometimes they're just a Nervous Wreck or Shrinking Violet in general) or, conversely, emotionless, has a Speech Impediment, can't remember how the poem goes (whether due to being a Forgetful Jones or simple human error), fumbles their words, recites it at a bad time, or keeps getting distracted.

The audience might boo, throw tomatoes, laugh at the poet, awkwardly try to be polite (perhaps damning the poem by faint praise), turn tail and leave, just sit there in silence (perhaps with Chirping Crickets), tell the poet to leave (often rudely), literally kick or throw the poet out, or swipe the poet away with a Vaudeville Hook.

Subtrope of Cringe Comedy and Stylistic Suck. Compare Piss-Take Rap. Sometimes seen in a Talent Contest, often being judged by a Harsh Talent Show Judge.

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Examples

Comic Strips

• Played with in FoxTrot. Peter writes a poem for his girlfriend Denise, excitedly bringing it to her in the lunchroom at school. She's very flattered and asks him to read it to her...because she's blind. Cue an Oh, Crap! from Peter because he forgot that, and Denise struggling not to smile because she knows he forgot.

Films — Animation

• Zig-zagged in Despicable Me 2. The youngest of the three sisters, Agnes, who apparently doesn't remember their mom, has to recite a poem for her school's Mother's Day program and is dreading it. While practicing with Gru, she speaks in a monotone with a completely blank look on her face. He asks her to try it again with more feeling. She agrees, but it comes out exactly the same. At the end of the film though, she happily recites a slightly modified version at Gru and Lucy's wedding, with a look of love in her eyes.

Films — Live-Action

• 22 Jump Street: Schmidt performs at a slam poetry reading to try and impress Amber. Upon going up to perform, he ends up talking about "Julia Rob-hurts" and ends it with "Cynthia, beep-bop, you are dead."
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: In Rodrick Rules, Greg reads a poem Rodrick made about what life was like a hundred years ago. As he speaks, there are illustrations in the background describing the historical inaccuracies (such as deserts being full of snow and giant spiders roaming the planet). This gets him laughed at by his classmates.
• In Drillbit Taylor, during a revenge montage, one of the two kid protagonists' bullies is tricked into reciting an awkward poorly written poem for poetry class where just the lines "And beyond the stroke of this shrinking fuzz..." makes the entire class burst out into laughter.
• The Grand Budapest Hotel: M. Gustave has a habit of spouting poetry at odd moments, which eventually rubs off on Zero. The poems (and his delivery) aren't necessarily bad, but he sure picks some awkward moments to recite them, like when his entire hotel staff is waiting to eat, or when he's clinging to the side of an icy cliff while an assassin tries to kill him.
• Not Another Teen Movie: There's a joke about Janey's Stalker with a Crush Ricky writing a creepy love poem, where he confesses to stealing her hair, and reciting it in front of the class. It ends with him in tears and the class thoroughly disturbed. This isn't the first time he did this as one student says, "Not again" after hearing that the poem was about Janey. Even the teacher was reluctant to call on Ricky, only doing when it was clear none of the other students wanted to recite a poem.
• Orlando kicks off with the eponymous young nobleman performing "The Bower Of Bliss" before the visiting Queen Elizabeth I. It's a little stilted at first and made a tad strange by Orlando's rather evocative gestures, but it doesn't really become awkward until he reaches the bit about how the virgin rose "fades and falls away"... whereupon a distinctly miffed Elizabeth points out that the poem isn't exactly appropriate when addressed by a callow youth to a very old woman. It's so awkward, Orlando's father has to step in and apologise on his behalf. Elizabeth is able to use the faux pas as an excuse to take the young man as a favourite, eventually leading to her granting Orlando a very generous gift of land — on the condition that he does not fade or grow old.

Literature

• Diary of a Wimpy Kid:
  • Rodrick Rules: During the talent show, Charise Kline reads a poem about global warming, while Terrence James plays a harmonica while riding a unicycle. Greg notes that those two do not go well together, presumably because of all the noise (and/or because playing the harmonica on a unicycle is too silly to combine with such a serious poem).
  • In Double Down, Greg points out that several of the poems in the Poetry Anthology book are pretty dumb, such as one called "My Turtle Fred", which is just about a turtle that will probably smell bad when he dies. Greg comments that the latter looks like it was written by a five-year-old.
• The Girls Series: In Girls Out Late, Ellie writes a romantic poem about meeting Russell in their local park. When she reads it out loud, she gets put in detention and laughed at by the other students. She's genuinely confused about why, until Magda and Nadine explain to her that, although she was writing about them kissing, it sounded as if she was describing them having sex in public.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Arthur and Ford are subjected to the horrendously bad poetry of the Vogon Captain, who then offers them a choice; get tossed out of the airlock, or tell him how much they liked his poem. Arthur tries to baldface his way out of it by trying to claim he rather enjoyed it.
  The Hitchhiker's Guide: Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their poetmaster Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning", four of his audience died of internal haemorrhaging and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council only survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos was reported to have been "disappointed" by the poem's reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his 12-book epic entitled "Zen and the Art of Going to the Lavatory", when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save lifekind, leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain. The very worst poetry of all, and its creator, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England, perished in the destruction of the planet Earth. Vogon poetry is mild by comparison.
• Jenny Linsky: In "How the Brothers Joined the Cat Club", Edward Brandywine writes a poem that goes, "I wish I was a butterfly, flying high, flying high". His "sister" Jenny thinks that's Sickeningly Sweet and tells him to write a "spooky" poem instead. So, he writes one claiming he's the ghost of a pirate.
• In One of Us is Lying, Janae reads an excerpt from Walt Whitman's poem 'Song of Myself' for Simon's vigil. Nate describes it as a "weird, rambling" poem and says that her voice was shaking the whole time.
• Sam's First Word: Mr. Theotopolus wants to influence Sam the baby into saying her first words, and he reads her a poem that only consists of his name being repeated forty-four times. She barely pays any attention because she just wants to be changed.
• Winnie the Pooh:
  • In "In Which Christopher Robin Takes Pooh to an Enchanted Place and We Leave Them There", Eeyore tries to write a goodbye poem, but it doesn't go well — he simply titles it "Poem", he keeps adding commentary on how good or bad the rhymes are, and at one point, he can't find a rhyme for "is", says, "Bother!", tries to find a rhyme for that, and ends up saying, "Those two 'bother's will have to rhyme with each other. Buther!".
  • In "In Which Tigger Comes to the Forest and Has Breakfast", Pooh writes a poem that has the line "Whatever his weight in pounds, shillings and ounces". Piglet doesn't like this line, since shillings are obviously not a weight, but Pooh says that the word "wanted" to be in the poem.
  • In "In Which Pooh Invents a New Game and Eeyore Joins In", Pooh tries to write a poem about a fir tree, and comes up with "Here is a myst'ry about a little fir tree: Owl says it's his tree and Kanga says it's her tree", but decides it doesn't make sense as Kanga doesn't have a tree.

Live-Action TV

• A Bit of Fry and Laurie: In one of the sketches Hugh Laurie reads a poem:
  Hugh: Underneath the bellied skies
  Where dust and rain find space to fall
  To fall and lie and change again
  Without a care or mind at all
  For art and life and things above
  
  In that, there, look just there
  No right, left, up, down, past, or future
  We have but ourselves to fear
  Stephen: Hugh, you chose that poem. For God's sake why?
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In the late 19th century, William Pratt was a meek, nebbish intellectual whose terrible poetry was roundly mocked by everybody who heard it. One recurring rhyme we hear is "My heart expands/'tis grown a bulge in it/inspired by your beauty/effulgent". A heckler at his poetry reading laughs that he'd rather have a railroad spike shoved through his head than listen to it again. Shortly thereafter, William is reborn as a vampire. Since it was established earlier in the series that his modus operandi involved torturing people with railroad spikes — hence his nickname, "Spike" — it's safe to say that heckler got what he asked for. Later subverted in the series finale of Angel; after he turns good and spends a day preparing to die in the finale battle to prevent the apocalypse, he recites the same poem to a crowd of rough-looking bikers in a seedy bar...and they love it.
• The George Lopez Show: One episode involved Carmen getting into slam poetry with a friend. Carmen's first attempt at writing poetry is a shallow love poem about how much she loves her boyfriend. Her friend encourages her to write angrier poetry based on her personal struggles. When George, her father, is dismissive of her new hobby, Carmen uses this as inspiration for her poetry. However, he comes around and shows up at the poetry club to listen to her read her poem. The episode ends with him watching Carmen as she begins reciting the angry poem she wrote about him.
• House of Anubis: At Gran's pestering, Fabian writes and tries to perform a poem for Nina. When he practices for Gran, he's stiff and afraid, and the poem's awkwardly short due to being a haiku. When he tries to actually read it to Nina, it goes even worse, because she's more interested in trying to tell him important news and storms off when he gets a little too insistent about the poetry reading, rendering him unable to even perform it for her.
• Impractical Jokers: Sal's punishment in "Poetry Slammed" had him do a reading of a poem written by the other Jokers, which was rife with cliches and plagiarism, intentionally invoking this trope.
• Roseanne: Darlene is forced to read a poem she wrote at school in front of a crowd. Normally a brash tomboy, she delivers it mechanically due to her nerves but it doesn't matter as the poem turns out to be an intimate piece about her feelings of not fitting in, earning a heavy emotional response from Roseanne and Jackie.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "Schisms", Data tries to write emotional poetry, but due to having no emotions and a big vocabulary, his friends just find the poems funny at best and boring at worst.
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
    • In "Sacrifice Of Angels", O'Brien and Bashir start reciting Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Charge Of the Light Brigade, a dark poem about war, while in the middle of an actual battle with the Dominion where the Federation forces are charging a Dominion fleet twice their size. Nog nervously tells them that it's the wrong time.
    • In "One Little Ship", Worf plans to write a poem about the adventures of his shrunken wife Dax and her two friends in a spaceship. However, he never gets around to it and is too proud to admit so. So when Dax tells him to recite the poem, he tries to make something up on the fly and comes up with the childish-sounding "This is the story of a little ship, that took a little trip".
  • Star Trek: Discovery: In "Forget Me Not", characters try to write haikus, but Hugh's doesn't scan ("Emperor Georgiou, feasting on the finest cuts, snarfs cookies on the down-low"), Tilly's is gross ("I puked upon the, Tellarite ambassador, once at Thanksgiving"), and Detmer is angry at Stamets, so she awkwardly tries to write one about his blood being hard to clean but can't get it to scan.

Poetry

• Some poems are set up to seem like someone tried to write a limerick but failed:
  • There was a young man from Japan,
    Whose limericks never would scan.
    When they said it was so,
    He replied, "Yes, I know,
    But I always try to fit as many words into the last sentence as ever I possibly can."
  • There was a young man from Tyree,
    Whose limericks stopped at line three.
    A bit like this one.
  • There was a young man from Peru,
    Whose limericks stopped at line two.
  • There was a young man from Verdun.^note The obvious next line, 'Whose limericks stopped at line one', would stop this from being a one-line limerick.
  • There was a young man from the sticks,
    Who liked to compose limericks.
    But he failed at this sport.
    They were always too short.
• Laura Elizabeth Richards' poem "Eletelephony" makes comedic "mistakes", like making Spoonerisms ("An elephant who tried to use the telephant. No, no, I mean an elephone, who tried to use the telephone") or changing a word to make it rhyme (e.g. writing "telephee" instead of "telephone" to rhyme it with "free").

Puppet Shows

• Fraggle Rock: Toward the beginning of the episode "Boober Rock", Mokey tries to read Boober her latest poem, but he's too annoyed with the noise of Fraggle Rock to want to listen. Later, after he's visited Gobo and heard from him about the "dull and quiet" Caves of Boredom, Mokey finds him and tries again to read him her poem.
  Boober: Mokey, I am even less in the mood for poetry now than I was before.
  Mokey: But, Boober, a poem is a gift. Oh, please, just listen.
  [Boober sighs as Mokey starts to read her poem.]
  Mokey: When Fraggle Rock's just noisiness,
  I long for perfect loneliness,
  A calm and sleepy quiet world apart.
  But once...
  Boober: Hey, that is beautiful!
  Mokey: Oh, thank you, Boober.
  Boober: "Quiet world apart." I should have thought of this years ago! [hurries off]
  Mokey: But... but, Boober...! [A Beat.] You only heard half of it.
• The Muppet Show: The first season has two episodes where Rowlf tries to read poems he's written, but something always happens to disrupt the reading.
• Sesame Street: In one sketch, Ernie tries to write a poem, but all he ends up doing is reciting the alphabet in a very dramatic way.

Video Games

• Black Closet has an open mic night at a coffeehouse as one of the events you can visit with your minions. Thais's poetry is bizarrely violent and delivered with scary enthusiasm. Althea's is supposedly about flowers, but it's so full of Double Entendre that it's basically lesbian erotica.
• Fable: Once per year, an inmate of Bargate Prison is selected for an ordeal that even the hardened criminals fear to speak of... a private poetry reading from the Warden. The verse is dreadful, but the Hero can steal the Warden's keys while he's focused on his recitation.
• Fallout 4: The Atom Cats garage has several lootable holotapes, with recordings of the gang hosting a poetry night. In one of the tapes, Rowdy tries to read a poem called "Ode to my Hammer", but suffers Performance Anxiety and gives up after the first line.
• In Nugget's mission of Kindergarten, he tasks the protagonist with giving Lily a love poem he wrote for her. Unfortunately, Lily can't read, so she asks Ms. Applegate to read it for her. Ms. Applegate obliges... by reading the poem out loud to the rest of the class. Nugget and Lily are both understandably humiliated, especially since the poem includes lines like "Nugget likes the Lily's hair / Nugget likes to smell her chair".
• In Night in the Woods, Mae can listen to poetry written and recited by her neighbor Selmers. The poems are very basic, following a simplistic rhyming structure and are mostly about nothing. Subverted later in the game when Mae has the option to listen to Selmers recite a poem at a meeting of the poetry society. It turns out Selmers is a very talented poet and she just saves her best material for the meetings.
• Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth: Marie's main trait is that she writes poems (which she insists aren't poems, but her "pathos" screaming out) that she doesn't want anyone reading. Her poems are always melodramatic and angsty, using flowery descriptions and metaphors to portray herself as lost and misunderstood. If anyone happens to read her poems without her knowing, she gets incredibly flustered and starts calling them immature insults. This becomes story-relevant in the Group Date Cafe, where one of Marie's poems finds its way into the hands of the protagonists. Whoever "loses" the group date has to read it out loud as a punishment, and no matter who it is, everyone is baffled and uncomfortable by the end of it.

Web Animation

• While Strong Sad of Homestar Runner fame is the resident poet, he's quite bad at performing prose.
  • In "The Luau" his supposed Polynesian Prose is just him mumbling faux Hawaiian straight from a book.
  • After calling out Strong Bad's own subpar "lyrical rampage" in the Strong Bad Email of the same name, Strong Sad attempts to show off his iambic pentameter, only for it to consist mostly of trochees instead of iambs (emphasis on the wrong syllable.)

Web Original

• Not Always Learning: In one unfiltered story, the poster reads the poem "Horace" to their English class, which is about a boy eating himself. The poster and the teacher are practically dying of laughter while the students look weirded out.
• Not Always Related: In "Poetry Getting a Frosty Reception", the poster briefly reads a line from "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost. Their grandmother is confused because she's never heard of this guy, and she says she can't keep up with modern celebrities (not knowing that he's been dead for over fifty years).
• Poetry 4 Kids:
  • One lesson plan is the "I Can't Write a Poem" Poem, in which the narrator claims they can't write a poem in poetry form.
  • The article on how to avoid a Painful Rhyme gives several awkward poems as demonstrations:
    • One poem has the wrong syntax ("Whenever we go out and walk, with you I like to talk", which is then changed to "Whenever go out and walk we do, I like to talk with you").
    • One of them has a Non Sequitur ("I like kittens. I think they're silly. I have a brother. His name is Billy.")
    • One doesn't scan ("As I was walking down the street, I was looking for some shade so that I could get out of the heat.")
    • One has the Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable ("I like to dance, I like to sing. I like smiling and laughing.")

Western Animation

• Zig-zagged in the 6teen episode "Deadbeat Poets Society":
  • In the main plot of the episode, Wyatt gets dragged into live poetry readings at the local coffee shop in an attempt to help him out of the funk of a recent breakup. Despite being Pushed in Front of the Audience with no material, Wyatt ad-libs a poem venting his anger towards his ex, which not only makes him feel better, but ends up being well-received by the patrons. He ends up planning on coming back, but backs off from letting his friends know out of fear that they'll make fun of him — when they end up finding out anyway and show up, he finds himself embarrassed and angered by how immature they end up being (including Caitlin farting really loudly during Wyatt's poem).
  • In an effort to make up for the incident above, the gang groups together and writes Wyatt an apology poem, which is recited before him and the rest of the coffee shop. It's absolutely terrible (enough to earn outright boos from the audience), but Wyatt recognizes the sincerity and forgives them.
  • Among the other characters reciting poems throughout the episode, Ron The Rent-A-Cop recites an... intense poem about the horrors of jungle warfare, evidently drawing from personal experience. While the patrons are generally polite and respond with kind to all the poem readings, this particular one leaves everyone silent and freaked out by what's happening.
    Jonesy: That... didn't make me want to laugh.
• Arthur: In "I'm a Poet", Arthur and his friends write poems, but most are pretty bad: Arthur's awkwardly adds in "Oklahomoo" for the sake of rhyming, Buster's is just a Long List of gross things, and Binky's rhymes "poem" with itself four times.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: In "The Tales of Ba Sing Se", Sokka comes up with a haiku with the lines "My name is Sokka, it's pronounced with an 'okka', young ladies, I rock ya!" so he can join a poetry club. The members go silent, and he is then thrown out (not for the bad rhymes, but for having too many syllables).
• Bob's Burgers: In "The Kids Run Away", Louise is hiding at her Aunt Gayle's to avoid getting a cavity filled. In order to draw Louise out, the rest of the family encourages Gayle's most annoying tendencies, such as asking that Gayle read her poetry aloud. While it doesn't get Louise to leave, it's clear that the poetry reading is excruciating to sit through.
  Gayle: Little cat, you're just like me / You go outside and squat to pee. SQUAT! SQUAAAT! SQUAAAT! SQUAAAAAT!
• Care Bears & Cousins: In "Wishing Well", Lotsa Heart has to recite a poem, but since she hasn't memorized it enough, she fumbles over it and gets some of the lines wrong.
• Family Guy: In "Rock Hard", Peter (playing the role of Jim Morrison) takes out a notebook from one of his, in his words, "trash bags of bad poetry". The poem itself goes, "The caterpillar, a tiny hair snake? Nay. Because of his many, many legs. The snake. A large, hairless caterpillar? Nay. On account of no legs, the snakeapillar". Lois, however, doesn't mind and decides to make out with him.
• I Haven't Got A Hat: Porky Pig starts to recite the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem Paul Revere's Ride, but due to his stutter, he can barely get his words out. He then gets dragged out by several stray dogs. After this, Little Kitty tries to recite Mary Had a Little Lamb, and not only does she accidentally say "cornflakes" instead of "snow", but she does a Potty Dance throughout it.
• The Loud House: In the titular pilot short (retroactively named "Bathroom Break!!"), Lucy reads Lincoln, who has to use the bathroom quite badly, a poem she made that compares love to water. Naturally, this does not help Lincoln's urgency one bit.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "Maud Pie", the eponymous rock-loving mare writes a poem that goes "Rock, you are a rock. Grey. You are grey, like a rock. Which you are. Rock."
• The Simpsons: In "Bart vs. Thanksgiving", Lisa channels her anger at Bart into a poem, "Howl (1955) of the Unappreciated". She tries to read it to her family, but gets five words in before they notice Bart on a TV broadcast and push her aside indifferently.
• Spongebob Squarepants: In "Sing a Song of Patrick," Patrick reveals he has a fear of public performance because of a traumatic experience he had reciting a poem in class. However, he recited it in the middle of gym class and took being pelted with dodgeballs as a sign of rejection from his classmates.
• In the Timon & Pumbaa episode "Kenya Be My Friend?", Timon forgets to buy Pumbaa something for the Bestest Best Friend Day. One of his lame attempts at a last-minute gift is a "poem" he's just making up on the spot. Once Pumbaa notices that the poem doesn't rhyme, he finally realizes that Timon forgot about the Bestest Best Friend Day. This leads to an argument that (temporarily) ends their friendship.

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