He's not a Vogon, just a very bad poet

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy describes Vogon poetry as being “the third worst poetry in the Universe” with Azagoths of Kria coming in second.

The very worst poetry of all in the history of everything is credited to  Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings. Though on the recent tour, the 'editors' of the Guide have been accepting submissions of some rather arm gnawing verse.

But how, I hear you ask, do you write something so mortally bad that the listener's brain actually seeks ways of devolution so that it can return to a primordial ooze with little to no understanding of languages and thus freeing itself of hearing any more?

Well you could use a poetry generator like this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/vogonpoetry/lettergen.shtml

Which simulates the twisted dirge of Vogon verse.

Here is my offering from this site:

See, see the Clever sky 

Marvel at its big puke depths.
Tell me, Ashley do you
Wonder why the pug ignores you?
Why its foobly stare
makes you feel tired.
I can tell you, it is
Worried by your humblington facial growth
That looks like
A cheese.
What's more, it knows
Your nudcrumble potting shed
Smells of pea.
Everything under the big Clever sky
Asks why, why do you even bother?
You only charm nappies.

So from this I can deduce, that to write really bad poetry you must:

Use bad imagery

Use very bad metaphors

Use simplistic adjectives

Pay no attention to time or meter.

So, taking this on board, and without computer assistance:

Ode to the furry thing I feed called a cat

Oh thing of fur,

with eyes,

your mouth eats the meat,

in jelly that smells bad.

Like a small vacuum cleaner that likes meat.

You swallow the jellied meat cubes,

That have escaped from their tin prison.

Purr cat Purr.

For that is your way,

Of telling me thanks,

For the smelly food,

Oh purr you furry cat like thing that is a cat.

Job Done

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Guilty Pleasures

Trevor's Living Doll

An irrational fear of pins became a tool for Trev,

who held Barbie each night of their relationship -

from the night at The Hound on that very first date

held her closer than close, as his God given right.

The mucky white van bearing ‘I wish my wife

was as dirty as this’ traded meat from the car park

with girls for all tastes, best in town for the price.

His eyes, like piss holes in snow reduced options

beer goggles meant choices of Exotic or White

were lost on his cash clutching hands in the car park

it was Barbie this time, Barbie caught the most light.

One night as he threw her about, he discovered

crashing through the lampstand forced a peep from her frame

The squeal of sorts met with delight from her master

as he forced the limp torso to play his cruel game. 

The fear was tweaked almost nightly. Curtain poles were swung,

blades brushed and pins; The smallest of pins could prize fear from her lips-

drunken Trev felt as man-God, drunken God-man did this.

The van in the car park became known to the locals

A popular haunt for 'promiscuous sorts'

the dollies were passed hand to hand, girls like Barbie-

guilty pleasures, made for nothing but mass intercourse.




---------------------------------------------

The theme this week is Guilty Pleasures. I was thinking Shakespeare all day, April 23rd being his recognised birthday and all but, it just wasn't working for me. We all know the thing I like doing the most that I don't tell people straight away is poetry and so what other way to indulge that than to write and share something so new it hasn't even made it off the printer yet. There are various shifts in pace, tone and tense to iron out. There are lines to chop, edit and rewrite entirely. There are also some fairly loose ideas knocking about in the piece that I would like to tighten up. This poem will probably be edited into a piece vastly different to what is written here but, as the evening fast approaches, I needed something to share with you guys. 

Cheers for reading,
Shaun.

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Desert Islands.

Good morning readers and welcome to what I feel could be an excellent week on the DGPS blog. With the BBC's Desert Island Discs celebrating 70 years on the airwaves this week, what better theme to start us off on our musings than Desert Islands themselves.

The thought of an island excites me. It scares me. It brings with it all sorts of adventures, perils and, as a vegan, I suppose some difficult choices. That said, it could also be quite relaxed should I drop amongst a coconut plantation- which is a little like I felt on Thursday night.

I want to add my name to the list of people singing praises. I thought the whole event was great (well done again to all at WordSoup- always guaranteed a good night) and actually getting to be on a poster excited some demonic part of me, I must say. I was worried though- I was on the island, waking Lost-style from the crash. First up from us had me a bit jittery but there, just past the light was a table full of coconuts. There has been some good stuff coming out of the group lately and to be amongst the tenders of such a fruitful plantation was a comfort at the least.

This moves me on to what I actually thought I should write about this week. The Island idea appeals to me as a boy scout (and after an afternoon thinking, I suspect The Scouting Book for Boys may be of more use to me than a poetry anthology) and one thing I found during my years there was how to be amongst friends- look out for one another and that is something that I like to think has stayed with me.#

I've been the unwitting receiver of various strange and unexpected news recently. There has been all kinds of madness and I wonder, as a writer, what is appropriate to take forward into new work. There is a clear line in my head but in the same way so many useful things are passed on and stay with you forever (how to hold a spade etc), surely they will stick around- perhaps surface somewhere in a muddled metaphor or character. This must be an issue for many writers and it is certainly something that I find needs to be considered with regards to more personal poetry. A line can find itself in the wrong mouth, stuttering with rage and completely out of context. A bit like the suggestions somebody might be pregnant following a poem I performed recently- and that was bloody me reading it!

Going back to the birthday mention, a quick search tells me I would automatically get a copy of the Bible (or alternative) so some soul searching could probably go on. I might pick a different book, learn a new culture completely on my own... I'd probably do what many of us would do- think about home, the past, the things in life we have and do hold dear. I wouldn't need 8 records. I would take them. A collection of festival/occasional/thoughtful songs that could be any 8 from a hundred. I would spend a lot of time listening to the things inside my head though- the voices I have carried with me. Advice, friends laughing, brothers, mothers, teachers, fathers, grandfathers... the voices in my head that are pushing for a poem and are better left to Caliban in Shakespeare's The Tempest (III 2.133-134)
"The isle is full of noises,
sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not."

Thanks for reading,
S.

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TV Guide.

Evening all,

I have no real excuse for not posting this writing task earlier, I just forgot about my early start. Sorry about that.

Anyway, this week's theme is Writing Exercises which I think could actually work in favour of my timing after all. I wrote this task for the Hodgsonberry festival event three of us attended at a local high school way back in July. I have actually aimed it to be a start point for some year 8s but I'm sure you can get along without my assistance and write something on your own, after all, there is nothing on TV tonight...

FINDING INSPIRATION: A WRITING WORKSHOP

When looking for something to inspire, it is easy to get lost in your own head, especially with a blank page in front of you. You are not stuck for ideas, you just think you are. Your body and mind have experienced thousands of different words and senses today and you have only just thought about it. With this in mind, before you start writing remember that 5 minutes of jotting is almost always more fruitful than an hour of thinking.

Today, we are looking at Objects. Objects can be great for inspiring you. They have been made, been lived with, been used and, somewhere along the line, probably seen or done something pretty wicked. Remember, there is a story behind everything.

Pick up the object. Turn it over. Ask yourself everything you can think of about it. Here are just a few to get you started

· What is it?

· Who does it belong to?

· Have you seen it before?

· What colour is it?

· Is it smooth?

· Does it smell?

· Does it say anything (i.e. is it religious, does it represent anything else)?

· Where did you pick it up?

· What has it seen?

· What does it do?

· Why does it interest you?

Think about all of these questions. Have a look at the POEMS idea below. Do you have enough ideas to piece together a picture now? Find a PERSPECTIVE you would like to write from and you are just about ready to dazzle with poetry.

	P is for People: Who are the characters in the poem? O is for Objects: What do they symbolise? Find 3 interesting things to say. E is for Emotion: Is the mood sad, happy, reflective, angry...? M is for Message: Is there something you’re trying to say? S is for Setting: Where is the poem set? Why here? What does this add?

Note: Nobody writes amazing poetry on a first draft. Never be afraid to cross out and re-write a line. You will know when a line fits, trust your instincts!

Thanks for reading guys, S.

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Bombing out: The difficult second post.

We’ve all been there. It has been a great idea. The most heartfelt piece you’ve ever written- and it bombs.

Tragic? Yes, for the time being but, if there is anything I have learnt from writing and regularly performing /reading aloud, it is that the audience can change. A lot. Somewhere amongst the drunks at the end of the night (which obviously, as fate would have it, is your allocated slot), great lines can go unheard. A soft spoken voice can be muffled by the clinking and if, by some miracle, it is comprehended, is that the kind of person that is going to speak up in support of your new ‘best ever poem’? No.

Yet, in following that point through with minimal disagreement, you reader, yes, I’m talking to you, have just run the risk yourself of being heckled, ignored or simply put up with by the audience... You assumed.

I’ve assumed and it isn’t nice when it all goes wrong. I’ve since started to consider just who my target audience is before getting down to writing poems. Back when I was reporting on the football, this was a given- a Scottish tabloid, not surprisingly, wanted all the juice on Mr Charlie Adam and so I wrote generally about girders, Glasgee and tough tackles amongst other things. Snippets of action and actual match facts amongst a blanket of pro-Jock hyperbole and rhetoric. Line after line of it, and they gobbled it up. The trouble I found is that, when facing the blank page, the easiest things to flow out are often the worst to read out.

With an event coming up, wit can be hard to come by and if, like I did, you are just starting out writing as a hobby, something fun can be the last thing you feel compelled to push a quill over. For a lot of people, poems aren’t the first thing to write in a moment of inspiration. They instead come at sombre times, times of importance to a person and often, with mixed feelings or in the heat of the moment. Some of the best work comes from here but also, we get these (of which I am frequently guilty):

1. Dead people- pieces from the heart, the crux of life and yet rarely all that popular at an open mic.

2. Emotions & Relationships- most notably, our old friend the sonnet. I’ve seen crowds turn faster than milk in student digs.

3. Protests- serious animal rights, contentious issues and religion. Really, I’m quite liberal. I’m bloody vegan but don’t tell me about dead bears and fur on a Friday.

In the right place, at the right time, 'proper poems' fly. I’ve had people coming up after quiet events to ask about lines (they obviously didn’t hear, did they). I’ve stood three weeks later somewhere different, read the same poem and had a room of empty faces not so much looking as facing back at me. In hindsight, visual metaphors were always going to be tough at the Blind Society but that isn’t the point.

As I’m on the first day of the theme, I’m leaving this post short of all the things I actually wanted to write about in the hope that, come Sunday, the marvellous team will have covered things like rhyme, form, meter etc but for now, I’ll just leave you with this.

We made a visit to Hodgson School on Thursday- 90 kids all high on pop and sweets and to be honest, we were fine. Interest remained strong, some even looked like they were enjoying being read to and afterwards, Lara, Vicky and myself enjoyed the rockstar treatment with teenagers queuing, yes, bloody queuing for autographs! I don’t know why I’m surprised at this though- Lar selected some of her most accessible lines, Vicky blasted in with wit and snappy haikus and I went with some tried and tested short pieces (even touching on some sentiment once they’d accepted me). All you doubters out there- we got through without a cock joke, racist slur or profanity in sight. A tough crowd it might have been- the point is, we’d simply considered it.

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