There is a huge difference between bad poetry and silly verse. Spike Milligan who, knew that “Things that go bump in the night, Should not really give one a fright” or Pam Ayres, who wished she’d looked after her teeth, would have been the first to deny being poets. Their rhymes were for fun - the lack of scansion, deliberate and the topics, simply wacky.
No, the truly bad poets take themselves seriously. They choose momentous topics and treat them with reverence. It’s just that something goes wrong in the crafting.
Made in Heaven
Perhaps our greatest Bad Poet was the notorious William McGonagall. Born in Dundee in 1830, the son of a Scottish pedlar, the self-styled “poet and tragedian” wrote hundreds of poems, some he claimed “under divine inspiration”.
One of his most famous poems, The Tay Bridge Disaster, reflects McGonagall’s penchant for the tragic.
Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.
Corpses aplenty
Shipwrecks, battles, bridge collapses, fires in theatres, hairdressers, waxworks: aside from the awful versifying, the body counts are perhaps the most striking thing in McGonagall’s “poetry”
Alas! That ever-to-be-remembered and unlucky night
When one hundred and forty lost their lives, a most agonising sight…
The crush and charred bodies were carried to London Hotel Yard
And to alleviate their sufferings the doctors tried hard”
Not amused
Never one to be troubled by false modesty, McGonagall dedicated much of his verse to Queen Victoria, and even tried to pop in and see her at Balmoral. He was most put out to be informed that he was not Poet Laureate and would not be admitted.
Whilst McGonagall’s poetry is unanimously reckoned the worst poetry ever published, some of our “great” poets have had their moments. Wordsworth, wandering lonely as a cloud, spied daffodils but also
A little muddy pond
Though but of compass small and bare
To thirsty suns and parching air
I’ve measured it from side to side
‘Tis three feet long and two feet wide.
Flower Power
Splendid stuff. Tennyson, the poet Laureate famously favoured over McGonagall in his failed encounter with Victoria, was not always firing on all poetic cylinders either. Take his love poem Esther, which adds whole new meaning to al fresco dining:
I roll'd among the tender flowers: I crush'd them on my breast, my mouth
Camomile tea anyone?
Cod moves in mysterious ways
But surely the richest vein of bad poetry must go to hymnodists. Praising the Lord was amongst the Victorian’s favourite pastimes and no one was denied a say on the spurious grounds of lack of poetic talent.
Earth from afar has heard Thy fame
And worms have learned to lisp Thy name.
And my all time favourite..
Ye monsters of the bubbling deep
Your Maker’s praises shout
Up from the sands, ye codlings, leap
And wag your tails about!
If you want more bad poetry, the works of McGonagall and The Stuffed Owl – An Anthology of Bad Verse are both available from www.amazon.co.uk. Each Summer there is a Bad Poetry Day, celebrating the best of the worst. Enjoy!