Competition | 5 December 2009

In Competition 2624 you were invited to submit a poem in the style of the legendary William Topaz McGonagall on an issue of contemporary relevance to the Scots.

Hailed by the TLS as ‘the only truly memorable bad poet in our language’, McGonagall built his reputation on appalling yet beguiling works of inadvertent comic genius. Neither plagued by a lack of self-belief nor hampered by self-awareness, the handloom weaver from Dundee forged ahead with his art in the face of universal mockery and derision. He has had the last laugh, though: his star burns brightly still more than a century after his death.
The sincerity of the original voice (which no doubt accounts for its considerable charm) is difficult to capture in parody. But you nailed well the stumbling metre and jarring rhyme. Especially impressive were G. McIlraith, William Danes-Volkov, Brian Murdoch, Graham Anderson and Nicholas Hodgson, who were unlucky losers.