[Graham King]

(Peter, your Belloc on Ali - fine form! I think it's certainly worth entering it into the ring of this competition. I would willingly fight your corner for Ali counting as a poet, not being counted out.)

(Here's the companion piece to my own post#56.)

Portrait of Ted Hughes by William Topaz McGonagall

On the seventeenth of August, Nineteen-Thirty was the year,
A man was born whom Nature-lovers should regard as dear
For upon the natural world he would later pen much verse
That would appeal to them (at least those not to blood and death averse).

A crag-faced man this Edward or Ted Hughes grew up to be
And he also wrote a very craggy sort of rugged poetry
Having grown on Yorkshire farmland fishing, shooting, stalking game
It came naturally to him to write verse about the same.

He wrote some children’s stories too, one called “The Iron Man”
About how friendship between a machine-giant and a little boy began
And with his sister Olwyn published books of poetry -
Not just his own but other people’s - such a man was he!

He was a man whom our dear Queen was pleased to elevate
In Nineteen-Eighty-Four to be the Poet Laureate
But on the twenty-eighth of October Nineteen-Ninety-Eight
Ted Hughes the nature poet tragically became late.

[Rob Stuart]

There was me thinking I was the only one who'd done a McGonagall...

William McGonagall on Sylvia Plath

On the eleventh day of February in 1963
A most dreadful thing occur’d, as we can all agree.
Sylvia Plath, a young woman whose verse was first class
Kill’d herself by inhaling gas.
There can be absolutely no question
She did this because she suffer’d from depression.

She met Ted Hughes, who later became Poet Laureate,
In the fair city of Cambridge where she was studying for her baccalaureate.
The two were wed a few months after
And at first there was a lot of joy and laughter,
But sev'ral years later Ted had an affair
And it was this that precipitat’d poor Sylvia’s descent into suicidal despair.