Humour, Satire, and the Rise of the Bad Poet

Abstract

This chapter considers the use of satire in newspaper poetry columns and correspondence columns, and editorial interventions in relation to poetic critique. It shows how newspapers became a site for the exploration of poetic norms and standards, and how the rise of a culture of deliberately ‘bad’ comic poetry both reinforced and questioned these standards. The first subsection examines correspondence columns and their commentary on poetic standards. The second shows how poets responded to these columns by producing fake bad poems, and how these became a popular genre across the press. It focuses particularly on the work of Alexander Burgess under the pseudonym ‘Poute’. The final section of this chapter demonstrates that William McGonagall was part of this culture of bad verse and drew on it in his own self-representations.