Austrian haiku champion
David Bromage
competition has been won by an Austrian. Take that, Japan! We bvuy
your cars and VRCs, now you read our haiku!
Following the shining example of my fellow countryperson, I now intend
to win the Scottish poetry competition by writing something really bad
in the style of William McGonagall.
Cheers
David
pete
The Poet McTeagle
(Camera pans away revealing a rather rocky highland landscape.
As camera pans across country we hear inspiring Scottish music.)
Voice Over:
>From these glens and scars, the sound of the coot and
the moorhen is seldom absent. Nature sits in stern mastery over
these rocks and crags. The rush of the mountain stream,
the bleat of the sheep, and the broad, clear Highland skies,
reflected in turn and loch ... (at this moment we pick
up a highland gentleman in kilt and tam o'shanter clutching a
knobkerry in one hand and a letter in the other)... form the
breathtaking backdrop against which Ewan McTeagle writes such
poems as 'Lend us a quid till the end of the week'.
(Cut to crofter's cottage. McTeagle sits at the window writing.
We zoom in very slowly on him as he writes.)
Voice Over:
But it was with more simple, homespun verses that McTeagle's
unique style first flowered.
McTeagle:
(voice over) If you could see your way to lending me sixpence.
I could at least buy a newspaper. That's not much to ask anyone.
Voice Over:
One woman who remembers McTeagle as a young friend - Lassie O'Shen.
(Cut to Lassie O'Shen - a young sweet innocent Scots girl -
she is valiantly trying to fend off the sexual advances of the
soundman. Two other members of the crew pull him out of shot.)
Lassie:
Mr MeTeagle wrote me two poems, between the months of January and
April 1969...
Interviewer:
Could you read us one?
Lassie:
Och, I dinna like to... they were kinda personal... but I will.
(she has immediately a piece of paper in her hand from which she reads)
'To Ma Own beloved Lassie. A poem on her 17th Birthday.
Lend us a couple of bob till Thursday. I'm absolutely skint.
But I'm expecting a postal order and I can pay you back as soon as
it comes. Love Ewan.'
(There is a pause. She looks up.)
Sound Man:
(voice over) Beautiful.
(Another pause. The soundman leaps on her and pulls her to the ground.
Cut to abstract trendy arts poetry programme set. Intense critic
sits on enormous inflatable see-through pouffe.
Caption on screen: 'ST JOHN LIMBO -- POETRY EXPERT')
Limbo:
(intensely) Since then, McTeagle has developed and widened his
literary scope. Three years ago he concerned himself with quite
small sums - quick bits of ready cash: sixpences, shillings, but
more recently he has turned his extraordinary literary perception to
much larger sums - fifteen shillings, £4. 12 and 6 ... even nine
guineas ... But there is still nothing to match the huge sweep ...
the majestic power of what is surely his greatest work:
'Can I have fifty pounds to mend the shed?'.
(Pan across studio to a stark poetry-reading set. A single light falls
on an Ian McKellan figure in black leotard standing gazing dramatically
into space. Camera crabs across studio until it is right underneath him.
He speaks the lines with great intensity.)
Ian:
Can I have fifty pounds to mend the shed? I'm right on my uppers.
I can pay you back when this postal order comes from Australia.
Honestly. Hope the bladder trouble's getting better. Love, Ewan.
(Cut to remote Scottish landscape, craggy and windtorn and desolate.
In stark chiaroscuro against the sky we see McTeagle standing beside a
lonely pillar box, writing postcards. The sun setting behind him.)
Limbo: (voice over) There seems to be no end to McTeagle's poetic
invention. 'My new cheque book hasn't arrived' was followed up by the
brilliantly allegorical 'What's twenty quid to the bloody Midland Bank?'
and more recently his prizewinning poem to the Arts Council:
'Can you lend me one thousand quid?'
(Cut to David Mercer figure in his study at a desk. Caption on screen:
'A VERY GOOD PLAYWRIGHT')
David:
I think what McTeagle's pottery... er... poetry is doing is rejecting
all the traditional cliches of modern pottery. No longer do we have
to be content with Keats's 'Seasons of mists and mellow
fruitfulness', Wordsworth's 'I wandered lonely as a cloud' and
Milton's 'Can you lend us two bob till Tuesday'...
(Cut to long shot of McTeagle walking through countryside.)
McTeagle: (voice over)
Oh give to me a shillin' for some fags and I'll pay yet back on
Thursday, but if you can wait till Saturday I'm expecting a divvy
from the Harpenden Building Society...
(continues muttering indistinctly)
(He walks out of shot past a glen containing several stuffed animals,
one of which explodes. A highland spokesman stands up into shot.
Superimposed caption on screen: 'A HIGHLAND SPOKESMAN')
Highlander:
As a Highlander I would like to complain about some inaccuracies
in the receding film about the poet Ewan McTeagle. Although his
name was quite clearly given as McTeagle, he was throughout wearing
the Cameron tartan. Also I would like to point out that the BALPA
spokesman who complained about aeronautical inaccuracies was
himself wearing a captain's hat, whereas he only had lieutenant's
stripes on the sleeves of his jacket. Also, in the Inverness pantomime
last Christmas, the part of Puss in Boots was played by a native of New
Guinea with a plate in her lip, so that every time Dick Whittington gave
her a French kiss, he got the back of his throat scraped.
(A doctor's head appears out from under the kilt.)
Doctor:
Look, would you mind going away, I'm trying to examine this man.
(he goes back under the kilt; a slight pause; he re-emerges)
It's - er - it's all right - I am a doctor. Actually, I'm a
gynaecologist... but this is my lunchhour.
http://www.montypython.net/scripts/mcteagle.php
--
pete
Fantod
> Following the shining example of my fellow countryperson, I now intend
> to win the Scottish poetry competition by writing something really bad
> in the style of William McGonagall.
This is not in that style, but you can have these haiku, actually sent to a
misbehaving client:
An urgent report?
Possibly, but let us see:
Seasons come and go.
Verification.
This is not an easy word
To use with haiku.
Sarcastic poems.
Never a very good sign.
Nature reference.
--
Patrick Phelan
w____\\W//___w Te Hupenui
The dog's meat, have you seen it?
http://choicelogic.com/~phelan/