Great title, Douglas. 'Emollient ointment' will rhyme with 'Royal appointment'. Just saying.

The Martian poet and publicist, Craig Raine, who masterminded my 'Faber Book of Blue Verse' attempted to win this competition thirty years to soon by penning a ditty called 'Arsehole'. I believe he got the idea from Rimbaud. French scholars among you will know. I don't think it rhymes or anything.

'Snot' anyone? Something polysyllabic that rolls off the tongue, as it were.

John Keats wrote a poem called 'Snot', 'n'
Most think it far better forgotten.
Though certain old fogeys
Assert Shelley's 'Bogeys'
Is quite transcendentally rotten.

If you wish to excel at bad verse,
Eschewing what's witty or terse is
Is most certainly vital,
But sometimes a title
Can make things immeasurably worse.

Good examples are, 'Stroking your Scrotum
While Spinning Round Like a Teetotum',
And 'An Epic on Farts
In Twenty-six Parts'.
Well, I ought to know since I wrote 'em.

Michel Chevreul and the Monsters of Margarine

Monotreme oviparous, ovum meroblastic,
avuncularly acetate, carbuncularly plastic
poly'fluoroethylene in D.D.T. and aspic
endemic to the OAPEC, Monsantoan, and CASPIC.

I have a (published) poem called Unplasticised Polyvinyl Chloride. I once read it as part of a performance in St David's Cathedral, accompanied by a well-known cellist...

Oh, sometime summer's unreturning track... (sigh...)

Roger, that must surely win the prize for Most Revolting Title.

George, do you think it would be better (i.e. worse) if I lengthened it to "What I want is what you've got"? Or is it still too good to be bad?

This is the worst title for a poem I could think of

It just remains to write the thing itself ...
Oh, blimey! This is harder than I thought.
Now, where’s that rhyming dictionary I bought?
I think I put it on the highest shelf.
I’ll have to go and get a dining-chair
To reach it - careful how you do it,
The chair is rather wobbly. Damn! I knew it
The blasted dictionary’s no longer there.
Perhaps it’s on the shelf containing trash?
(Detective stories, thrillers, hard-core porn,
The latter being quite well-thumbed and worn.)
I stretch - but with a godalmighty crash,
xxThe chair collapses. Now I’m really pissed -
xxNo winning poem, just a broken wrist!

Good stuff here. I must admit George's Jimmy Savile will be difficult to beat. Meanwhile here's new, improved 'Snot'.

John Keats wrote 'A Sonnet to Snot', an
Effusion far better forgotten.
Though certain old fogeys
Assert Shelley's 'Bogeys,
A Ballad' is equally rotten.

There's Tennyson's 'Bumfluff', a verse
Neither prettily witty nor terse,
Whose every recital
Shows just how a title
Can make bad immeasurably worse;

Like 'Stanzas on Stroking a Scrotum
While Spinning Round Like a Teetotum',
Or 'Epical Farts
In Twenty-six Parts'.
And I ought to know since I wrote 'em.

How Your Postcode Affects Your Orgasm

(Title of an article in ‘Glamour’ magazine, April 2007)


Most folk with any common sense
Are celibate in NR9;
The jollies there are so intense
They have been known to snap your spine.

A climax in L24
Is barely worthy of the name;
You might not be entirely sure
Quite when or even if you came.

The toes will curl infrequently
In EH21, but you
Will be in fits of ecstasy
Around the clock in CF2.

The petit mort in OX8
Lasts half a second, then it’s gone,
But in E6 it’s bloody great;
It just goes on and on and on!

John, that's horribly good.

Rob, also very good - but where on earth are all those postcodes? Mind you, as an ex-inhabitant, I tend to think that only London needs postcodes, and that everywhere else, they still make do with homing pigeons.

Thanks, Brian. And I agree about Rob's poem.