Bad Poetry Competition

In the small hours last night, trying to go to sleep, I flicked onto some pop music show on TF1. "Et voici," the presenter was in the middle of saying, "Katie Melua avec son nouveau single, Nine Million Bicycles." Katie Melua has only been big in Britain since I left the country, so I thought I'd listen and see what the fuss was about. On comes aforementioned Georgio-British soft-pop songtstress gently cradling her acoustic guitar. "Excellent," I thought, as a few bars of unchallenging guitar picking opened the song, "this will have me asleep in no time." Then she opened her mouth.

"There are nine million bicycles," she smooched, "in Beijing". Mmm. So far, so educational. "That's a fact." Right. (Was this penned by a trainspotter?). "It's a thing we can't deny." Facts are generally things that you can't deny without looking a bit silly. You don't need to ram home the point, dear. Where is this leading to exactly? "Like the fact," (oh, a comparison), "that I will love you till I die."

The last time I saw anyone labour anything that much, she gave birth to a baby elephant.

William Holman Hunt
Isabella and the Pot of Basil, 1876, oil on canvas

Still, it got me thinking about the worst poetry I have ever seen published. Occasionally, people are willing to do utterly inhumane things to the language in order to get a rhyme. New Order are usually good for some terrible lyrics, with one outstanding example being "Love, it's like honey, you can't buy it with money" (Crystal), which leaves me extremely nonplussed, or "The sea was very rough, it made me feel sick, but I like that kind of stuff, it beats arithmetic" (Slow Jam). Then there is Mike's favourite: "Love juice, love juice smells like... (beat) ...stale fish". The latter was, however, from a joke song performed as an encore for a crap audience in New Zealand, so not exactly a commercial release.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy says that the absolute worst poetry in the galaxy was written by Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex. A spot of internet research reveals that this is a warped version (for legal reasons) of Paul Neil Milne Johnstone, and if you wish you can read about him, and his poetry, here.

But for me, the single worst line of poetry in all existence is to be found at the end of verse 48 (yes, 48!) of Isabella or the Pot of Basil, by the celebrated 19th-century English poet, John Keats. You could argue that perhaps he'd run out of inspiration by this stage of the work, but in fact (without wishing to be dismissive...) all 63 verses form a grotesque paean to epic dross. Here, Isabella is digging up the earth, trying to find the grave of her lover - who incidentally was called Lorenzo, and not, sadly, Basil. Read, observe, and enjoy her reaction.

That old nurse stood beside her wondering,
Until her heart felt pity to the core
At sight of such a dismal labouring,
And so she kneeled, with her locks all hoar,
And put her lean hands to the horrid thing:
Three hours they labour'd at this travail sore;
At last they felt the kernel of the grave,
And Isabella did not stamp and rave.