Doggerel of Silv’ry Tay paid its way, says expert

HE has been lampooned for more than 100 years for being the worst poet in history.

But William McGonagall may have been having the last laugh after a historian claimed the dreadful verse may have been planned all along.

The unemployed weaver became an unlikely celebrity after his elaborate depiction of the Tay Bridge disaster had people clutching their sides rather than wiping away their tears.

However, an expert in Victorian literature believes the Dundonian poet was far from a fool.

Kirstie Blair, a professor of English at Strathclyde University, has suggested he may have deliberately written badly to capitalise on a lucrative trend for atrocious poetry popular at the time.

He became a man in demand,

‘A craze for bad poetry’

and at some recitations could earn up to 15 shillings a night, or about £83 in today’s money.

‘McGonagall has become known as the world’s worst poet,’ said Professor Blair. ‘However, he was actually part of an established culture of deliberately bad newspaper poetry and became a major comic poet through it.’

Professor Blair has compiled a collection of poems published in Scottish journals in the Victorian era and discovered that it was a time when gifted wordsmiths often took a second billing.

‘Across Scotland there was a craze for publishing bad poetry,’ she said. ‘It became a huge draw for readers and a culture emerged where people would send in deliberately bad poems.’

‘He must have known newspapers were more likely to publish a really good bad poem than they were to publish an ordinary one.’