If you’re reading this thinking, “Why do I want to know about William McGonagall? I haven’t heard of him, so how is he important in literature?”
Well, I had the same question!
While on an English Studies course, I still haven’t encountered this legend in my studies. During my 2nd year, I attended the Creative Writing Club at University. I loved it. The committee taught us something different and expanded our knowledge. And one week was about William McGonagall.
The Man. The Myth. The Absolute Bloody Legend.
So, who is this legend?
William Topaz McGonagall was a Scottish-Irish poet born in March of 1825 in Scotland’s Captial City, Edinburgh, to a working-class Irish family. He died on September 29th 1902 and was laid to rest in Edinburgh’s famous Greyfriars Kirkyard.
You’re thinking, “So, he was a poet?” Yes! He was, but that is just the surface level. I enjoy reading poetry but am never good at writing it. Prose is my strongest Creative Writing field. Mr McGonagall gives me the chaotic confidence to write poetry.
How?
Well, you see, Mr William Topaz McGonagall is widely regarded as an (as Wikipedia puts it, “extremely bad poet who exhibited no recognition of, or concern for, his peers’ opinions of his work.” (Wikipedia 2023)
Basically, he wrote what he could, it was shit, but he couldn’t care any less. Brilliant!
His reasons could have been born out of desperation. His family had been weavers, and he expected to follow in their steps, but work was hard for him to come by. He had had an illegitimate child, a daughter, and he was considered to have brought shame to his family. So, out of work and needing money, he turned to poetry.
Could he write poetry? No. In some people’s opinion.
Suppose you want to read serious, hard-hitting, emotionally and academically stimulating. In that case, you’ll find McGonagall’s poetry rubbish and agree with others. However, I do agree his poems aren’t stereotypical masterpieces, but I think he was brilliant. His poems ooze chaos, and I love seeing how people shatter rules. When you start to understand that I love reading about characters that do anything out of spite and chaos, you’ll know this man was just the type I’d read about.
Two well-known poems by McGonagall are The Tay Bridge Disaster and The Famous Tay Whale.
I think both poems are okay, but that could be because I can’t do much better. Poems admittedly can confuse me at times. I get lost in the flowery words and forget to understand any cohesive images,
So, after being taught briefly about McGonagall, what did we do?
We wrote the worst poems that our sleep-deprived, over-studied minds could conceive.
AND IT WAS GLORIOUS.
I vividly remember crying, gasping for air and leaning over my desk to relieve my aching abdomen. There wasn’t an ounce of logic in the room, and it was magnificent.
Here is one I found on my Google Drive. I can’t find the ones I wrote in the club, but this one was sitting aimlessly in one of my Google folders.
The Pain
I’m tired; my jaw is sore,
Like a haze snow,
It’s my mind,
It hurts, the pain
Oh, is that a plane?
I’m a mat,
Where’s my lane?
Feed my Aunt’s cats,
Now
Go with all in tow,
Bye
And since I’m writing this while in the middle of my last lot of third-year assessments, here is another to describe my current mental anguish.
For reference, my three modules this semester, as a joint English and Journalism student, have been:
Creative Writing (I love this)
Law & Government For Jounralists (Lot of jargon, but the lecturer made the content fun)
Digital Media & Culture (Content is engaging, assessments are diabolical)
Sickness & Assessments
Transmediality
Why?
It deformed my reality
Privacy
Journalists Defamation – don’t lie to me
Creatively
Come with me and we’ll defy gravity
I’m sick
Sore throat and chest
Crackles and whistles bubble in my chest
Coughs threaten my lungs and muscles
My relief quenched by blackcurrant soothers
Time to sleep
My body rests
NukesTop5 accompanies my restless slumber
Smudge lingers
Healing me while my mind wanders
Oh, these are awful. I love them!
