I got this out of the library a few weeks ago. Unlike a lot of poetry anthologies, most of the poems are by modern poets - many of them still alive. Some particularly good ones are "The Death of the Loch Ness Monster" by Gwendolyn MacEwan, "The Back Seat of my Mother's Car" by Julia Copus, "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden and the following poem by Kit Wright that I'll borrow here for a wee bit.
(N.B. All the nice English people I know (and those I don't) should take it in the tongue-in-cheek style it's intended (Wright himself is English). All the rest should probably take it literally).
Everyone Hates the English
Everyone hates the English,
Including the English. They sneer
At each other for being so English,
So what are they doing here,
The English? It's thick with the English,
All over the country. Why?
Anyone ever born English
Should shut up, or fuck off, or die.
Anyone ever born English
Should hold their extraction in scorn
And apologise all over England
For ever at all being born,
For that's how it is, being English;
Fodder for any old scoff
That England might be a nice country
If only the English fucked off!
4 comments:
If ye can say "it's a braw bricht moonlicht nicht" then yer a' richt, ye ken ...
Why is Michael standing in a fountain, simpering like a big eejit?
"The English are moral, the English are good, and clever and modest and misunderstood ... the English are noble, the English are nice, and worth any other at double the price!"
I love this poem, it's one of my favourites, I googled "fodder for any old scoff" and this blog came up! Yey! I'm going to post it on my blog spot too (I also have that anthology!)
www.myspace.com/femmefaux
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