hughmacdougall.com

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My poetry is naive poetry. It’s often good fun and I’ve enjoyed reading it at Folk Festivals and to small audiences and you don’t need an encyclopedia or a really big dictionary to understand it. Sometimes it’s serious and sometimes it’s funny. The poetechnicians would tell you that the rhythm is often off. I think the rhythm should express the emotion of my message, not some theory of correctness. Ill start this off with one of the funny ones, a poem that tells you what I think of poetry. To see more poems and stories you should go to the category link with the same name.

WHEN TO WRITE POETRY

I’ve been asked by your teacher to sum up all this hype

By encouraging you to write poetry, but, which type?

It depends on the mood you’re in more than anything.

If you’re really happy, perhaps you’d rather sing.

If you think that poetry’s on the nose

I advise you to stick to prose.

But if you think the person of opposite gender

Just over there has descended from heaven above

And your feelings are really soft and tender

Poetry is the best, to write of love.

A beautiful being in a bonnet

Is a perfect subject for a sonnet.

Writing for your sister or brother, you would need a gimmerick

And, therefore, you would have to write a limerick.

Now would you like to know when to write in free verse?

That’s when you throw the rules away or put them in reverse;

Like some people not at all like you riding on a bike:

You just ride the wrong way and do anything you like.

When you have a long story to tell it is imperative

That you sit down for a time and write a narrative.

However, if you should choose to write an epic,

By the time it’s finished you’ll be quite decrepic.

It’s true! And in the history books you’ll find

That after writing Paradise Lost John Milton went blind.

Writing children’s poems or poems for football teams,

You take your writing finger out and oil it

In a very special way, it seems,

By sticking it in the toilet.

If you are not feeling too hysterical

You might write calmly, something lyrical.

But in a really silly mood the French would say it’s bon sense

To write a poem like this one, that is, nonsense.