Poet laureate on football

peterstorey

Still not banned
Joined
Nov 16, 2002
Messages
37,291
Carol Ann Duffy's had (another) go at a football poem:

The Shirt

Afterwards, I found him alone at the bar and asked him what went wrong. It's the shirt, he said. When I pull it on it hangs on my back like a shroud, or a poisoned jerkin from Grimm seeping its curse on to my skin, the worst tattoo.

I shower and shave before I shrug on the shirt, smell like a dream; but the shirt sours my scent with the sweat and stink of fear. It's got my number.

I poured him another shot. Speak on, my son. He did.

I've wanted to sport the shirt since I was a kid, but now when I do it makes me sick, weak, paranoid.

All night above the team hotel, the moon is the ball in a penalty kick. Tens of thousands of fierce stars are booing me. A screech owl is the referee.

The wind's a crowd, forty years long, bawling a filthy song about my Wag. It's the bloody shirt! He started to blub like a big girl's blouse and I felt a fleeting pity.

Don't cry, I said, at the end of the day you'll be back on 100K a week and playing for City
 
I'm sure she meant 'vag' not 'Wag' there. She always mentions her vag, I've found.

Anyway, that's quite possibly the shittest thing ever.
 
It is spectacularly shite, but then she's not very good even when she's banging on about moist vags.
 
Yeah. She should still stick to vag though.

She probably does most of the time to be fair, at least in her personal life.
 
sincher said:
Yeah. She should still stick to vag though. .
Click to expand...
Indeed, this one's about Beckham (allegedly).

Achilles

Myth's river- where his mother
dipped him, fished him, a
slippery golden boy flowed on,
his name on its lips.

Without him, it was prophesised,
they would not take Troy.

Women hid him, concealed him
in girls' sarongs; days of
sweetmeats, spices, silver
songs...

But when Odysseus came, with
an athlete's build, a sword and a
shield, he followed him to the
battlefield, the crowd's roar,

And it was sport, not war, his
charmed foot on the ball...

But then his heel, his heel, his
heel...
 
We have better poets on the cafe to be honest, that first one is terrible beyond belief.
 
Afterwards, I found him alone at the bar and asked him what went wrong. It's the shirt, he said

:lol: :lol:

That is horrible
 
:lol:

When I hear the words 'Poet Laureate' I picture a bloke in a flowing white robe spouting bollocks in Persian about the stars and the moon while nautch girls in ornate sarongs fling their arms around in front of some 18th century Mughal court.

I had no idea modern states still employed them.
 
Carol Ann Duffy is a good poet, her job is not. The Poet Laureate has to 'capture the age' through poetry and that can be quite restricting I would imagine.
 
MJLD said:
Carol Ann Duffy is a good poet, her job is not. The Poet Laureate has to 'capture the age' through poetry and that can be quite restricting I would imagine.
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Yeah, quite restricting, but it doesn't mean that the subsequent poems have to be as shit as that. I've read school childrens poems infinately better than that.
 
I just don't like free verse, but I don't think the imagery or concepts are too badly portrayed. It's the last throw away line that makes it shit for me.
 
MJLD said:
Carol Ann Duffy is a good poet, her job is not.
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In a nutshell.

The Shirt is all about Tevez, though. 'My family knows how much I suffered at United', indeed.

"He started to blub like a big girl's blouse and I felt a fleeting pity.

Don't cry, I said, at the end of the day you'll be back on 100K a week and playing for City."

I can't help but :lol:
 
Is it not about England's players being utter shite?
 
Spammy said:
Poetry.
Click to expand...

Well done Spammy, here you go!

gold_star.jpg
 
The thing about the poet laureate is that as a job, it's restrictive, and nonsense, and utterly pointless in this day and age. Only Tennyson has ever managed to do anything good with it, and even then that was against the grain (for the time)

Having to write bollocks for Royal weddings and seminal occasions saps the creativity for a start....then considering that most poets are complete twats, you've got a recipe for disaster.
 
I went to a gig a couple of years ago, didn't realise it was a joint poetry gig and actually ended up having more poetry than anything else.


I decided to get as drunk as possible. It was the only thing that stopped me killing myself.
 
Slough
Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air -conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.

Mess up the mess they call a town-
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years.

And get that man with double chin
Who'll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women's tears:

And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.

But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It's not their fault that they are mad,
They've tasted Hell.

It's not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It's not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead

And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren't look up and see the stars
But belch instead.

In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.

Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.


Not a bad effort by Betjeman.
 
Mockney said:
Having to write bollocks for Royal weddings and seminal occasions saps the creativity for a start....then considering that most poets are complete twats, you've got a recipe for disaster.
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"OK, so it's your opinion then. My opinion of your opinion is that is was unfounded, ignorant nonsense....It is something annoying when that happens..."
(Mockney)

https://www.redcafe.net/f8/who-will-banned-first-world-cup-fallout-301875/index4.html#post8309421

If I didn't know you're omniscient and infallible I'd be rather tempted to point out you could do worse than taking your own advice regarding sweeping generalisations about certain groups of people without having adequate empirical foundations for said generalisations.
I could also say I think you're talking out of your arse, and that we're all entitled to do that from time to time without being shot down in a blaze of ellipses. ;)

Be that as it may, I do agree being appointed Poet Laureate can be stifling. In spite of the constraints Betjeman (as mentioned by Grinner) and Hughes did reasonably well, I think.
 
MJLD said:
Carol Ann Duffy is a good poet, her job is not. The Poet Laureate has to 'capture the age' through poetry and that can be quite restricting I would imagine.
Click to expand...

decorativeed said:
Yeah, quite restricting, but it doesn't mean that the subsequent poems have to be as shit as that. I've read school childrens poems infinately better than that.
Click to expand...

A good poet laureate should have a healthy substance abuse problem, methinks.
 
Waltraute said:
"OK, so it's your opinion then. My opinion of your opinion is that is was unfounded, ignorant nonsense....It is something annoying when that happens..."
(Mockney)

https://www.redcafe.net/f8/who-will-banned-first-world-cup-fallout-301875/index4.html#post8309421

If I didn't know you're omniscient and infallible I'd be rather tempted to point out you could do worse than taking your own advice regarding sweeping generalisations about certain groups of people without having adequate empirical foundations for said generalisations.
I could also say I think you're talking out of your arse, and that we're all entitled to do that from time to time without being shot down in a blaze of ellipses. ;)

Be that as it may, I do agree being appointed Poet Laureate can be stifling. In spite of the constraints Betjeman (as mentioned by Grinner) and Hughes did reasonably well, I think.
Click to expand...

and you're welcome to slam said opinion viciously like a horny chimp with a submissive frog
 
It's an even more difficult job to write to order but at least the last laureate Andrew Motion (also a shit poet) had the good sense to shut the feck up most of the time.

This is a proper poem:

RAIN
by Don Paterson

I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face;

one long thundering downpour
right through the empty script and score
before the act, before the blame,
before the lens pulls through the frame

to where the woman sits alone
beside a silent telephone
or the dress lies ruined on the grass
or the girl walks off the overpass,

and all things flow out from that source
along their fatal watercourse.
However bad or overlong
such a film can do no wrong,

so when his native twang shows through
or when the boom dips into view
or when her speech starts to betray
its adaptation from the play,

I think to when we opened cold
on a rain-dark gutter, running gold
with the neon of a drugstore sign,
and I’d read into its blazing line:

forget the ink, the milk, the blood—
all was washed clean with the flood
we rose up from the falling waters
the fallen rain’s own sons and daughters

and none of this, none of this matters.
 
Greavsie (John Hegley)

it's not much of a planet
that everybody leaves
there's not a lot of faith about
but I am someone who believes
that what we need without a doubt
is more of Jimmy Greaves
imagine Jimmy's picture in every picture frame
imagine all religion praising Jimmy's name
the world is just a candle
and Jimmy Greavse is the flame
won't you gimme Jimmy
it used to be his turn of speed.
he left defences in a daze
now he rents his turn of phrase
and when I turn on the TV
and Jimmy's there
my spirits raise
and when I'm in a blazing row
and I'm in the process of rolling up my sleeves
I just think of Greavsie and he relieves me
more and more of Greavsie
is what this counrty needs
he's the man to sow the seeds of sanity
he's off the boooze he's on the ball
he's got a message for us all
he can help humanity
to heal itself
to haul itself
from this self-destructive stupor
he's what you call a trooper
I think he's blinking super
he's a tooper super duper
so please don't give me Henry Cooper
he isn't Jimmy Greaves
people say that I'm loopy
they think I'm nothing
but a Greavsie groupie
but I tell them
you're not fit to wash
Jimmy Greaves' moustache
 
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