from St Brigid's Adjudication - Competition - Poetry Please

St Brigid did not apply for the role of Patron Saint of Poetry and when she was asked to judge the Celestial Festival of Poetry competition her comments proved to be controversial and caused some offence. Here is an extract from her adjudication...

from St Brigid's Adjudication....

The poems written in the English tongue

Scored highly for their scansion and their rhyme,

Although I thought a few of them too long,

And those by William Blake a waste of time.

I was impressed by Shakespeare I must say -

He showed a way with words beyond compare,

Though many of his sonnets were, well, gay,

With references to wills* found here and there.

John Milton's sonnets hum with gravitas

But can be boring, worthy though they be.

I found Walt Whitman's free-verse rather crass,

And Eliot was too-smart-by-half for me.

The poems of Tennyson, although they scanned,

Lacked depth. And as for Edgar Alan Poe,

His supernatural ravings should be banned.

Who wants to read about a freakin' crow?

Ezra Pound I found 'quite interesting',

And Ginsberg has 'a decent turn of phrase',

But I would add Lord Byron's offering

To those that I would damn with such faint praise.

I tried my very best to like John Donne

And metaphysical Andrew Marvell**.

Needless to say, it wasn't any fun.

In fact, I thought I'd died and gone to Hell.

I read Seamus Heaney with derision

With his 'moil', his 'dungy ooze' and 'dark-flecked ash'.

His earthy, worthy, rain-swept celtic vision

Should be pulverised and put out with the trash.

And as for Hopkins' dark-night-of-the-soul,

Preserve us, Lord, from witnessing his pain.

I'd rather clean a rancid toilet-bowl

Than wallow in A. Motion's*** work again.

What of the women poets, you may say -

The works of Dickinson invoke my wrath,

And I would add this comment, if  I may:

I've had it up to here with Sylvia Plath!

I haven't mentioned Dryden, Keats or Pope

And many others that perhaps I should.

The truth is that they never had a hope -

The winner is the peerless Mike Ellwood****.

*'Will' often had a rude double meaning for Shakespeare.

** Stress second syllable

*** Andrew Motion is the current British Poet Laureate.

****That would be me.