This is me, Eccles

This is me, Eccles
This is me, Eccles

Sunday 19 June 2016

A saved poet replies to Carol Ann Duffy

Poor Carol Ann Duffy has made a brave attempt to write the worst poem ever seen - after a dozen lines claiming that all sorts of people are "gay", it ends with the following very silly lines:
The actress is gay,
spot-lit in the smash-hit play;
the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker,
our children, are gay.
And God is gay.
goldfish

My pet goldfish is gay.

This shows an understanding of theology that would embarrass an under-9s Bible class, or maybe just an attempt to troll people of faith: CAD forgot, however, to include Mohammed in her litany of honour. If it were not written by the poet laureate - you know, the successor to Wordsworth, Tennyson, Betjeman, etc. - this garbage would not have been published in the Barnsley Chronicle, let alone any national newspapers. Still, we may respond to it in its own terms.

thief

As thick as thieves.

Thieves are thick,
And end up in the nick;
My custard is thick,
and it makes me sick;
Atheists, alternative comedians, and Guardian journalists are thick.
Unsaved Tommy Reese

The Fishwrap's Fr Thomas Reese SJ is thick.

Whoever thought Carol Ann Duffy was a good poet 
is thick.
And we really need a stronger word
Like "stupid", "imbecile", "moronic" or "deranged",
but Carol Ann Duffy is thick.
Can I be the next poet laureate please?

23 comments:

  1. Eccles please google Alfred Austin or Colley Cibber. The award of Poet Laureateship usually has little to do with poetry.

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    Replies
    1. Oh I know:

      Across the wires the electric message came:
      'He is no better. He is much the same.'

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  2. I had the extreme misfortune of coming across this "poet" in A-Level English Literature years ago.

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  3. The Grauniad Newspaper. The BBC (Television and Radio). The Luvvies. American So-Called Statesmen. British So-Called Statesmen. Now, So-Called Poets Laureate.

    Call me Old-Fashioned, but IS THERE A GAY AGENDA, going on ?

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  4. Thanks Eccles for once again expanding my knowledge after prompting me to investigate past Poet Laureates (or should that be Poets Laureate?) The present incumbent does indeed seem not to be unique in her talent.

    Googling around I was curious to learn that one Poet Laureate wrote the words to 'While shepherds washed oops I mean watched their flocks by night'. The tune we are familiar with in Britain is sung in France to a hymn to the Blessed Sacrament - I recently sung it while taking part in a procession for the Feast of Corpus Christi in Paris. For us English it is difficult not to think of the Christmas Carol even while singing 'C'est Toi, Seigneur, le Pain Rompu...' I wonder which came first?

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    Replies
    1. The Italians sing a post-Communion hymn to that tune as well. Most disconcerting.

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    2. In the United Kingdom and Commonwealth countries, the standard hymn tune of “While Shepherds Watched” is “Winchester Old” (initially simply “Winchester”), originally published in Este‘s psalter The Whole Book of Psalmes from 1592. This tune was, in turn, arranged from chapter VIII of Cambridgeshire composer Christopher Tye’s setting of the Acts of the Apostles in 1553.[3][4]

      George Kirbye, an East Anglian madrigalist about whom little is known, was employed by Este to arrange some of tunes featured in his The Whole Book of Psalmes and it is his arrangement of Tye’s work that appears in the psalter to accompany Psalm 84 ”How Lovely is Thy Dwelling Place” with the melody in the tenor.[5] The tune and hymn text were probably first published together in an arrangement by William Henry Monk for Hymns Ancient and Modern in 1861.[5][6]


      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/While_Shepherds_Watched_Their_Flocks

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    3. The Tajikistan Amateur Football Premier Division (South-East) have the same tune for their Anthem for Post-Communist Sporting Achievements. I'm not sure of the words. Perhaps Eccles' Readers can help ?

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    4. In post-Communist Russia they sing:

      Vladimir Lenin is buried and dead
      Now we’ve got Vladimir Putin instead

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  5. Superb, Eccles. You show a deep understanding of form, metre and popularity and the usual contempt for rhyme, beauty or meaning required by today's pottery establishment.

    Love from Limerick,

    Mrs M

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  6. Gushing bard Carol Ann Duffy
    Said, “Why are you being so stuffy?
    It’s all about gender.
    When I call God a bender,
    It makes me feel all warm and fluffy.”

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    Replies
    1. That genuinely made me lol! That was was a hundred times better than the original poem.

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  7. There was an old woman called Duff
    Who wrote piles of tortuous stuff-
    Yet all she could say
    Was "You are all gay!"
    Before she went off in a huff.
    (W Shakkespeare age 9)

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  8. The 'Barnsley Chronicle' is an august organ of truth!

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  9. Dame Carol, Supreme Bardess,
    All gaiety and largesse,
    So inept in the poet's craft,
    As to be consider'd totally and utterly daft.

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  10. We've got some really talented poets commenting here.

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  11. All of the above are better pomes than the one wot the Poet Laureate wrote. It just seems to me that, if God really were gay, and created the entire population of the world gay, he might have chosen a different method of human reproduction.

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  12. This poem is crap.
    Can’t everybody see that?
    Not those on the left –
    The ones who’s morals lie bereft,
    In their endless sea of whining
    And ‘Dianafication’ of everyone dying.
    Their mentality of victimhood
    Really doesn’t do them any good.
    And it isn’t really very funny,
    Over-spending other people’s money,
    Because in the end there’s nothing but debt.
    I guess you haven’t figured that out yet?
    Best to think of happy times,
    Of rainbows, hearts and picket lines.
    That’s where you do best –
    My self-loathing friends on the left.

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  13. HAIKU BY AN OVERWEIGHT SCOTTISH POET LAUREATE
    Deep-fried Mars bars are gay
    I've had three today;
    Irn-Bru is gay
    Best not throw it away...
    Eh?

    And don't tell me it isn't a haiku. This is the 21st century? It's what I say it is and if my haiku wants to use the women's bathroom it jolly well will.

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  14. There was a young lady called Duff
    Whose poems were exceedingly ruff
    She says we're all gay
    We are all made that way
    So the future is going to be tuff

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  15. This isn't exactly correct poetic form but here goes....

    Carol Ann Duffy is sort of nutty when she says that God is gay
    Because we all know we are body and soul
    And God’s image in man’s body is the FAMILY.

    Man woman and child – THE FAMILY - is the Image of the Holy Trinity on earth
    Therefore God cannot be described as gay
    Because two men or two women are not God’s image
    But the reflection of satanic moral decay.

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  16. god is gay
    hip hip hooray
    he 's created everyone
    in the rainbow way
    thus spake duffy
    poet laureate of the land
    and how our cheeks do burn
    with shame
    that she is a called a poet of fame


    when he sees the sham
    that we now have made




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