Australia
1 entry
- 1944 Jun 2026 The Ern Malley Affair In 1944, two Australian poets wrote 16 deliberately terrible modernist poems in one afternoon, using random dictionary words and newspaper clippings. They submitted them as the work of a fictional dead poet named Ern Malley. Max Harris published them as a major literary discovery. Harris was tried for obscenity. The twist: literary critics later argued the hoax poems were genuinely good. The hoaxers accidentally wrote better poetry drunk on spite than they ever managed sober.
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