Vogon Poetry

DublinWriter

One of the funniest elements in the HitchHikers Guide to the Galaxy was the concept of Vogon Poetry; a form of poetry so bad that it was used by the Vogons as an instrument of torture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogon_poetry).

It was a real credit to the pure technical writing skills of Douglas Adams that he could pull this off in the original novel (with not more than a passing nod to Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky):

Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
Thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits
On a lurgid bee.

Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes
And hooptiously drangle me
With crinkly bindlewurdles,
Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon,
See if I don't!

It takes real talent and technique to appear to be both hopeless and funny at something at the same time. Witness the mastery of Les Dawon's piano playing, Tommy Cooper or Andy Kaufman in general. All were past masters of their particular comedic arts and knew which particular rules to break.

But I think there is a little Vogon in all of us. Could you write a piece of poetry so lucirously bad that it would make others want to tear their own heads off before you got to the end?

(P.S. Avoid Limericks...not funny).

Valmont

I remember this, it was very funny as were the first two books in the series