DeDanaan

Filed by Aine MacDermot

Poetry : Poetry, well written, can be a spiritually uplifting experience. Badly written, it can be an experience of buttock-clenching horror. Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem “Ode To A Small Lump of Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One Midsummer Morning” four of his audience died of internal hemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been “disappointed” by the poem’s reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic entitled ‘My Favourite Bathtime Gurgles’ when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization, leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain. The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England, in the destruction of the planet Earth by the Vogons. It involved decaying swans.

Examples of good, if long, poetry can be heard on the planet of Golgafrincham, home to the great circling poets of Arium.