World\'s worst poet honored...

By Estelle Shirbon

LONDON (Reuters) - A Scottish poet so bad he was often asked to perform just so the audience could laugh at him will have his verse etched in stone in the city where he worked.

William Topaz McGonagall, who died in 1902, has gained posthumous recognition in the Scottish city of Dundee, which plans to mark the centenary of his death by engraving part of one his poems on a walkway by the river Tay.

"His poetry is so bad it\'s memorable," said Niall Scott, director of City of Discovery Campaign, the organization behind the plan.

"Dundee has recognized the need to honor McGonagall as somebody absolutely dedicated to the art of awful poetry."

But in McGonagall it has a unique product. He was a textile industry worker who began writing poetry at the age of 47 after a "muse" visited him in his Dundee apartment.

"All of a sudden my body got inflamed, and instantly I was seized with a strong desire to write poetry, so strong, in fact, that in imagination I thought I heard a voice crying in my ears write! write!" the poet recounted in his autobiography. For the following 25 years, McGonagall chronicled events from battles to the opening of hotels in dreadful verse.

"No one can surpass him for being the worst poet," said Mervyn Rolfe, chairman of City of Discovery Campaign and a member of the Dundee-based McGonagall Appreciation Society.

"He doesn\'t care how many words there are in the line as long as the last words rhyme, so the meter is appalling."

Here\'s an example of his poetry:

"Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay !

With your numerous arches and pillars in so grand array

And your central girders, which seem to the eye

To be almost towering to the sky..."

Obviously, London hasn\'t had much news lately.