Goody awful poetry

There has been much gnashing of garments and renting of teeth among the literati about who the next Poet Laureate should be. Gnash not, for I have discovered the perfect candidate. His name is Dermot Byrne, and his application for the post came in the form of a post on the BBC’s Have Your Say forum; specifically, in a thread asking “What is Jade Goody’s legacy?”* Here it is, in full:

Goodnight sweet Jade
Your time has passed
May heaven or hell be filled with your laugh
You may not have been beautiful
You may not have been smart
But like Diana you'll always be in our hearts

What Byrne has done so brilliantly is to create something that has sufficient form that we recognise it as poetry; yet the work contains within it such a dazzling array of technical badness that we start to doubt our frames of reference. “Is this a poem?” becomes “Is anything else a poem?”; in the same way as, when we are confronted with someone of monumental stupidity, we are forced to question how we define humanity. Also, it is possibly unique in the tradition of elegiac verse in that it raises the distinct possibility that the subject might be roasting in eternal, unimaginable torment, thus expressing the mixed responses that the mention of Jade’s name provokes, and doubtless providing great comfort to her family at this difficult time.

In its heartfelt crapness, the poem brilliantly embodies its subject; its seamless blending of form, function and content verges on genius. This makes Dermot Byrne my candidate for the Laureateship.

However, I would also like to draw attention the the contribution from one Maria of New York City, who vouchsafes to us the fact that “I personally think death sucks btw”. How so very true.

* Near enough eight digits, I would have guessed, when you add the book deals, the perfume and the wodge from OK!