Michaelmas Week 1

And so, having been elected by democratic process (Mwahahahah! The foools!) I began to produce poems with a consistency that surprised even me. Along with my rash promise to provide a poem for each and every JCR meeting, I was almost managing to maintain one additional poem per week. All I can say is second year psychologists must have bugger all work to do. As you will see however, after the first term things slipped fairly severely, into a much more realistic release pattern based on 'whenever I actually bothered to write something'. Anyway, I'll post the poems for each week, and when there's a JCR Meeting one to accompany it, you can have that as a bonus.

For my first ever poem as Poet Laureate, I wanted to set a tone of hopefulness, excitement and limitless possibility. However, I was also a third-year, so I was unable to actually feel such emotions, saddled as I was with a burning hatred of all the disgusting fresh-faced freshers...all full of spunk and beans, unsullied by two years of hard graft. Hence this.


Welcome to Corpus...You Now Hate:

As JCR Poet it gives me great pleasure
To welcome each one of you sprightly young freshers
No doubt from now on you'll be making new friends
and living the high life, the fun never ends.
That's how it will feel for the next week or so
as you bask in the haze of post-interview glow

However:

Not all of us feel so pleased to be back
For a start there's collections to ruin the vac
and the horror of finals beginning to loom
infusing our lives with foreboding and doom
There's a reason that 3rd years are grumpy and terse
and your carefree demeanor, to be frank, makes things worse.

And so in the interest of keeping me sane
I thought your parade could do with some rain.

You see, when people arrive in this town
And take their first steps in that fetching black gown
They find themselves filled with a strange kind of prejudice.
Logic or reason can't help take the edge off this
sense that there's some kind of sign on the gate
Saying 'Welcome to Corpus... you now hate:

The tourists and tour guides who flood the back alleys
and wander so blindly yet manage to narrowly
Dodge being hit (though we wouldn't be sorry)
By the equally hated recycling lorry.

you will find soon enough that it's quite common knowledge
That we disklike all those who don't go to our college
They're just so rich/poor/modern/posh it's despicable
and thick/clever/rude/nice (delete as applicable)

To unis like Durham or Oxford *cough* Brookes
Our snooty derisiveness must make us look
Like elitists, quite wrongly, as I can attest
we're really just lonely...it's tough being the best.

And last but not least in this bitter tirade
come the people we most love to hate and degrade
For though in couple of years we'll be gone
These anti-tab sentiments always live on
I'll never stop hating those pale blue bastards
(Assuming I don't get a place on that Masters)

But since you are all only just at the start
of your sojourn in Oxford don't take this to heart
You'll be happy and carefree throughout your time here
(And as as bitter and twisted as me by next year).