A few days ago, I received an email from a blog I didn’t know I was following.
The author had just updated with a poem about the Ship Canal Bridge in Seattle that was heavily influenced by the William McGonagall verse The Tay Bridge Disaster. For the avoidance of doubt, only the style is lampooned; the Seattle bridge is in no danger of collapse.
I’m from Dundee, right next to the Tay, and McGonagall is closely associated with the city. As I read the Ship Canal Bridge poem, I found I had more and more I wanted to say about the poet and his output.
A major hallmark of his distinctive verse came from forcing clumsy descriptions into rhyming lines. It amused me to see the critically-panned film director Tommy Wiseau under the See Also section in his Wikipedia entry.
However, I’ve also heard McGonagall’s technique described as ‘journalistic’, as his words often give a factual insight into the subject. This is showcased neatly in The Tay Bridge Disaster.
To our eyes, such a poem might seem insensitive to its victims and their relatives. However, there appeared to be no public outcry 143 years ago; even in modern times, performances are often played for laughs.
I must credit Dundee Rep Theatre with making an exception in 2019. As part of a local history show called The A to Z of Dundee, one of the actors read an excerpt from the piece. Despite the overall show being comedic in nature, he gave it a poignant tone that I think was better suited to the subject matter.
One of my university tutors believed McGonagall was the only poet whose entire body of work had been published. Better still, his output has been in the public domain for decades, so it’s easy to find countless other examples of his style.