[John Whitworth]

If you google www.winningwriters.com you will come across the Wergle Flomp Humorous poetry contest where there appear to be genuine dollars to be won (a $1,359 first prize) for NO entrance fee. Your intrepid reporter pressed on and discovered what you do. You enter the WORST poem you can possibly write (I think McGonagall here) and SIMULTANEOUSLY you enter it for one of those vanity poetry contests where every one is a winner. And if your poem is truly execrable and it wins acceptance on the Vanity website, then you sit back and rake in the dolars. Last year's grand Wergle Flomp was a chap who looks like Mel Gibson in what we English call a dinner suit (dinner jacket if we are posh) and what Americans call a tux. His winning anti-poem is a quite risible piece of Walt Whitman. Whitman himself would probably have won at a canter. Anyof you budding Ern Malleys want to have a bash?
I once wrote, in my callow youth,a poem of unredeemed awfulness that began. 'Wind your wildering hair with sorrow./Wind it with the night' and went downhill after that. I could resurrect it, though I've (mercifully) forgotten how it went. Joe Kennedy co-edited a fine Anthology of real gluggers from real poets called 'Pegasus Descending' from which I cull this Canadian morsel by James McIntyre.

We have seen thee, Queen of Cheese,
Lying quietly at your ease

Dammit, that's so bad it's GOOD!

Any Sphereans want to try to be Wergle Flomps? Alternatively do you know any bits of really BAD poetry (perhaps even written by your good selves in your younger days before you saw the light). Who wrote this?

Over his head were the maple buds,
And over the tree was the moon,
And over the moon were the starry studs
That drop from the angels' shoon.

Dammit,they don't MAKE poetry like that any more.