Mad poets society
LORD KNOWS RHYMERS CAN BE WEIRD
ONE of his lovers famously said he was “mad, bad and dangerous to know”.
It’s 200 years this week since British Romantic poet Lord Byron died, but his reputation for being a bit of a loony lives on.
And he’s not the only bard that may have been one stanza short of a full poem.
Here JAMES MOORE looks at the habits of the wacky wordsmith and history’s other eccentric poets…
Wild life: As well as leading a racy sex life, Lord Byron kept a bear as a pet at college, plus a monkey and a badger. He also used to drink out of a human skull found at his ancestral home Newstead Abbey and asked to keep his poet pal Percy Bysshe Shelley’s cranium when he died.
Paw show: Shelley himself hated cats. He once tied a poor moggy to a kite and flew it in a thunderstorm to electrocute the animal. He liked to make paper boats out of bank notes, but died on a real one that sank in 1822.
Rhyme nor reason: Daffodils writer William Wordsworth penned no poetry after being made official Poet
Laureate in 1843. Instead, he once wallpapered an entire room with old newspapers.
Condi-mental: Scottish poet Sir Walter Scott is said to have owned a salt cellar made from a neck bone belonging to Charles I – and composed the whole of his famous work Marmion while on horseback.
Flushed with success: Alfred, Lord Tennyson found fame with his Crimean War poem The Charge Of The Light Brigade. His party trick was impersonating people going to the toilet.
House bound: Reclusive US poet Emily Dickinson always dressed in white, didn’t leave her home after the age of 30 and hid her poems, most of which were only discovered when she died.
Funny talk: William Blake, who wrote the poem that became the hymn Jerusalem, was nicknamed the “Cockney nutcase”. He used to have imaginary chats with Roman leader Julius Caesar.
Boozing the plot: Notorious drunk Dylan Thomas, of Under Milk Wood fame, barked like a dog when smashed, urinated in public and is said to have announced, “I’ve had 18 straight whiskies”, just before dying in 1953.
Freaky fears: English poet Edward Lear, who wrote limericks and The Owl And The Pussy-cat, had a terrible phobia of dogs and horses.
Hue are ya? The Waste Land author, US-born T.S. Eliot, liked to use green lipstick and make-up on his face and called himself Captain despite never having worked at sea.
Bit car-azy: Former Poet Laureate John Betjeman liked lying down by the side of the road and pretending to be dead to amuse himself and pals by seeing who would stop. Body of work: Made to wear iron undies to straighten her spine as a child, British poet Edith Sitwell was known for her wild dress sense and once posing for a photo as a corpse. Dirty truth: W.H. Auden’s Stop All The Clocks poem was famously read in the movie Four Weddings And A Funeral, below right. Auden, below left, had awful personal hygiene, fell out with author J.R.R. Tolkien after describing his home as “hideous” and branded himself “not an alcoholic, but a drunk”.