Professor Kirstie Blair, a contributor of content to this site, has written an article entitled McGonagall, ‘Poute’, and the Bad Poets of Victorian Dundee for the latest edition of The Bottle Imp – a journal published by the Association for Scottish Literary Studies.
In it, she describes the “lively culture of bad poetry” that was fostered by the Dundee newspapers in the years running up to the start of McGonagall’s poetic career, particularly the works of “Poute” who satirised the efforts of working class poets with his deliberately bad efforts. To quote from the article:
Reading through the newspaper poems of these years makes it evident that far from being ‘in a special category’, McGonagall was contributing to a pre-existing poetic culture that hovered between the satirical and the serious, and that caused difficulties for editors faced with deciding which was which.
This throws a new light on the question of whether McGonagall was “for real”, or whether he was writing bad verse on purpose. Personally, I remain in the former camp – but the Professor’s article offers considerable food for thought.
