Despite a reputation for dead seriousness, poetry has a long relationship with humour, from Catullus' complaints to Chaucer's ribald tales to Kenneth Goldsmith's appearance on e Colbert Report. Focusing on our contemporary moment, Why Poetry Sucks scrutinizes Canada's poetic avant-gardes for signs of humorous life. Moving de ly between entertainment, attack, and critique, this poetry makes us laugh while making us wonder why we're laughing at all. e authors in Why Poetry Sucks draw from deep traditions in both poetry and comedy, o en challenging the rigid literary and political impasses they encounter. In our current social and cultural game of Blockado (the game of barricades), humour can act as an important sledge, taking a swing at the institutions and ideologies we might wish changed - all the while acknowledging, with bitter laughter and tongue in cheek, our apparent inability to change them.".