Poetic Graffiti: clerihews on ten modern Christian poets

by Kim Fabricius

Well folks, it's been too long since our last series of clerihews. So for those of you who have trouble reading poetry (or would like to be able to talk about poets without reading them), Kim has now produced a convenient abridged version. Here are ten clerihews on modern Christian poets (five of them dead, five living):

W. H. Auden
Sure liked his Gordon’s;
Of course the intoxicated sod
Was also drunk on God.

Wendell Berry
Is very, very
Farmy.
And some would say barmy.

T. S. Eliot,
Just for the hell of it,
Paraded his Latin and Greek
(The pompous High Anglican geek).

Kevin Hart
Is exceedingly smart;
Writes on God, deconstruction, and sex –
With his ex.

Geoffrey Hill,
Dense and difficult; still,
His poems on our malady
Are such fun to parody.

Elizabeth Jennings
Prayerfully wrote about sinning
And shadows and terror –
Unlike the pope, without error.

D. Gwenallt Jones
Is likely unknown
To those who know little of Wales.
That’s a lot of Theology Fails.

R. S. Thomas
Was furiously famous
As a Welsh priest and poet.
But “God is love”? You wouldn’t know it.

Archbishop Rowan,
With R. S. and Euros Bowen,
Another Welsh poet and priest,
Alas now sings with Dylan “I Shall Be Released.”

Franz Wright
Sees the light
In the dark in his verse:
The headlights of a hearse.