Cautionary Tales – “Genius Still Unrecognised”; The Worst Poet in the World
William McGonagall’s poems are something else. The jarring meter, the banal imagery, the awkward rhymes: they made him a laughing stock in 19th Century Scotland and are still derided to this day. How does someone get that bad at poetry? Or have we been misunderstanding McGonagall all along?
Further reading and listening
The Collected Poems of William McGonagall are edited by Chris Hunt. Chris Hunt is also the creator of the invaluable resource McGonagall Online, which contains all the poems, McGonagall’s contradictory autobiographical essays, and a treasury of other resources.
For a persuasive argument that McGonagall knew exactly what he was doing, read Gord Bambrick “The Real McGonagall”
Jennifer Barnes “Re-viewing failure: William McGonagall as Macbeth at the Theatre Royal, Dundee, 1858”
For a quirky biography in cartoon form, check out The Comic Legend of William McGonagall by Charles Nasmyth.
The critics arguing we should stop reading McGonagall include Joseph Salemi and Gerard Carruthers.
A powerful account of the Tay Bridge disaster is John Prebble’s classic The High Girders.
