[Joe Crocker]

Joe Crocker (He/She/It)

He writes his stuff and posts it under doors.
His age and sex, his fantasies, are no concern of yours.

His rhymes reflect his humour -- down to earth.
A pamphlet is “forthcoming” but refuses to come fearth.

Winner of the awkward prize, ham-fisted.
Seldom short- or long- but sometimes shopping- or black-listed.

Nominated (driver) for the pushcart.
Buried in your slushpile, self-regarding little upstart.

[Mary Meriam]

I love it, Joe! It made me actually LOL. Did you deliberately omit periods in S2?

[R. Nemo Hill]

Ha!

Nemo

[Tony Barnstone]

It's fun.

Some thoughts:

Why caps? "Down"

Not sure what "Nominated (driver)" means. Some joke there, but I'm not getting it.

"His sex, her age, its fantasies" is a hard lift, as the "its" I guess refers back to "his stuff" on previous line, but I might prefer "their"

"come fearth": funny!

Enjoyed, Tony

[Rick Mullin]

Another thumbs up!
RM

[Joe Crocker]

Thanks for the thumbs-ups. Pleased it struck a chord. I rediscovered these doodles the other day and they made me smile so I rather slapped them up on the website. Hence the sloppy punctuation.

The impulse was to try to write something a bit different in the biography section of poetry journal publications. I rarely enter competitions so don’t have many trophies to parade. I don’t think I could actually use any of these couplets in a genuine biography because that would probably be a little too disrespectful to the journal, but maybe I can find a place for them somewhere.

Thanks for the questions Tony. The He, She and Its in Line 2 was a late addition, trying to add another layer and call back the personal pronoun preference joke at the start. But it does make the line less easy to read and not much will be lost if I stick with male pronouns.

Similarly the last couplet is also slightly tricky to parse meaningfully. I clearly haven’t been nominated for a pushcart prize. But a pushcart needs someone to push or drive it, so I may have been its nominated driver. (It also has echoes to me of when you went out drinking and nominated one of your company to stay sober and drive.)

[David Callin]

Excellent, Joe. I boggled a bit at "fearth" at first, but got it eventually. (I thought, initially, it might also be a dialect thing - it's not, is it? I know you're Yorkshire and all that.)

Just to be a bit of a wet blanket, I think the usual term - in the UK, at least - is "designated driver", but I enjoy the pushcart joke too much to worry about that.

Cheers

David

[Brian Allgar]

As one cart-pusher to another, Joe, very enjoyable.

[Jim Moonan]

I dare you — double dare you — pinky swear me — you'll include this with your next submission as a short biography — Ha!

Such self-deprecation! It's a very hard trait to pull off successfully but you do it here with aplomb

It rolls out so easily in spoonfuls of couplets. The one that had me scratching my head is how your rhyme can be called "down to earth" but then you answered it with the very next line — Each couplet is a smile.

I like it, too, transposed to be in first person. It is, after all, autobiography. But then again, the N is writing about Joe Crocker.

.

[Joe Crocker]

Thank you David, Brian & Jim

Yes David, it is of course a “designated” rather than a “nominated” driver. And I did eventually realise that, which is why these doodles got put on pause a month or two ago, while I thought of something better. When I rediscovered them, I had forgotten what the problem was, but I guess it sort of works without that reference. And “fearth” as far as I know is not a Yorkshirism, but what would I, a Lancastrian, know about it!

Thanks for the challenge Jim. I have not yet worked any of these couplets into my bio’s. I do occasionally try to make them more quirky. For example I had a bio in Ink Sweat and Tears last Feb where I described myself as “eye-wateringly uninteresting”, which I hope made me sound paradoxically quite interesting. Or maybe not. It is quite tricky to draw attention to yourself in a good way when you don’t have much to genuinely show off about. So I find myself going for the exaggerated understatement. I rather like George Simmers’ Snakeskin because he eschews bios but he does put in a link enabling you to message the author.

Thanks again

Joe