Sherwin Tjia
Published: 2005
Total Pages: 180
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The World Is a Heartbreaker inaugurates a new subgenre: imposter poetry. This collection is a set of 1600 pseudohaikus, bite-sized chunks of poetic goodness shotgunned at the distracted masses. What's a pseudohaiku? It's the poetry of pure indulgence, a three-liner without the constraint, the pretension or the 5-7-5 syllable form. The subject matter? Relationships, cats, insecurities - themes recur and build into a kind of non-linear narrative. These micropoems are easily digestible yet remarkably acute, a catalogue of scattered thoughts and pointed observations that go down like potato chips - betcha can't read just one. Sometimes sexy, sometimes scandalous, sometimes sentimental, but always three lines long, these pseudohaikus are the future of poetry in a world awash with sound bites, news clips, catchphrases. There are no pleasures like the guilty ones. About Tjia's earlier books: 'Gentle Fictions is a tender, playful and inspiring poetry collection ... Tjia's poems are often silly, cute and irreverent, but artfully so.' - Matrix '[Pedigree Girls] is hilarious. It's also filled with raw, biting social criticism. [It's] the weirdest comix you'll read all year ... discover the seductiveness of nihilism by way of an author with a sharp sense of humour.' - NOW