Poetry Hallway - Croyland Otter Loses His Mind Over the Onset of Winter

Come in. Be mindful to step OVER the envelopes piled on the mat. Don't walk through them, or we'll want to know the reason why. We'll attend them in due course; the majority will be placed in the nearest postbox, marked 'RETURN TO SENDER', for Croyland Otter does like to lick stamps.

Oh, how we tried to dissuade Otter from submitting further material to Poetry Hallway. We care about your literary pleasure, really we do. But since the poetry-scape is a gradient, with jewel-encrusted gold stuff at one end, and terrible arse-scrapings at the other, we felt that we had a duty to waft the latter under your nose, that you may experience balance in all its trueness. (We try damned hard to offer better-quality poetic musings, but they are hard to come by.)

That doesn't mean we're happy about it; nor does it mean that you have to be, either. Regardless, this latest wordy ejaculation from Croyland demonstrates his fragile mental state, and no one is more interesting and worthy of scrutiny than a damaged artist. Long may he remain critically messed up!

One point of interest is his brief mention of former Conservative MP for Northeast Cambridgeshire, Malcolm Moss. We thought we might get something politically charged, which would have demonstrated an interest shift for Otter. We didn't.

Winter Rapes My Precious Bog

Flatly peat land, turning white,

Halting whiffs of muck-spread shite;

Turnips piled, obscuring light,

My Fenland playground, hid by night.

Crystal blanket pulled across,

Choking brown beneath the frost;

Bludgeons like a Malcolm Moss,

Lecturing in the ways of loss.

Passing pubs of ill repute,

Where Tony Martin hid from dues;

Snow is piled upon their rooves,

Hiding those forensic clues.

But I care more for silty sludge,

Than for a farmer with a grudge;

I cannot help but love so much,

That slippy, silty, Fenland sludge.