British writer and model Max Wallis is set to become Grindr’s new poet in residence and will be creating monthly ‘video poems’ on the gay social networking app.
Wallis has written about his appointment on the saying, “Poetry and sex have a long and venerable history, one often being used in the service of setting up the other".
He writes that he will be continuing on the work of Catullus, Lord Byron, Sharon Olds and Carol Ann Duffy and will use the essential Grindr themes of “relationships, our increasingly unsympathetic world and quite a lot of sex” as inspiration for his poetry.
The videos will be directed by Ashley Joiner—who has also directed feature length documentary Pride?
The first poem is called Remnants and was partly inspired by Emily Dickinson. Wallis says it’s 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.”
Wallis is a Polari Prize-shortlisted poet, has modelled for Cerruti and Comme Des Garçons and was previously the face of Evian mineral water.
“The truth is, there is no “proper” subject for poetry. All of life is its subject. Nothing should be out of bounds,” says Wallis.
