Grindr Hires A Poet In Residence

Grindr has just hired a poet-in-residence, who will be writing and releasing monthly poems about the app’s essential themes.

British writer Max Wallis will be releasing a new video poem every month that will appear on the Grindr app, and its new digital platform Into.

Although Grindr has not yet revealed details about this forthcoming platform, saying it has a few things “still in the works”, Wallis said the monthly videos will be directed by Ashley Joiner, who has a documentary called Pride? premiering at the BFI LGBT film festival later this month.

Writing in the Guardian, Wallis said the overall goal is to offer greater insight into what it is like to be gay in today’s world, each poem touching on Grindr-related topics including relationships, sex and “our increasingly unsympathetic world”.

Wallis said: “You might, at this point, be wondering how much poetry can be excavated from a social networking app. A fair question although this sort of thing is not wholly new ground.

“Alain de Botton was Heathrow’s writer in residence in 2009 and managed to make the Hounslow terminal sound both glamorous and freighted with emotion.

“The truth is, there is no “proper” subject for poetry. All of life is its subject. Nothing should be out of bounds.”

Every week, the new instalment will link to the last, telling a “larger story” about being gay in the digital age.

The first poem, called “Remnants”, is said to be inspired by the work of Emily Dickinson and looks at the mental and physical after-effects of sex.

Wallis said: “The first poem, Remnants, is about what you leave behind psychologically and physically after sex; your interpretation of what happened, and the way you cleave to the remnants of it – the cigarette butts, the messed-up sheets.

“You see my character on two dates with two different boys. There is a crescendo of bodies.”

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