Pothole Poetry:
A Reminder

The Herald’s call last week for Pothole Poetry has elicited a big response so far. The poems started coming in the day after the paper was published, and we now have more than three dozen.

We have old poets, young poets, at least two town clerk poets. We have limericks and haiku, a poem written in lowercase in imitation of e. e. cummings, a poem praising road workers and one praising The Herald editor’s dog, poems with lines starting with P…, O… etc., an 18^th-century-sounding poem beginning "O lovely chasm."

To review: Pothole Poems must be submitted to The Herald by the morning of April 1. There are no rules except they must be about potholes, ultra-long poems are discouraged, and swears are prohibited. We won’t publish them all, but we’ll publish a bunch and draw the name of a winner for some 2008 maple syrup. Mail them to P.O. Box 309, Randolph, or email them to editor@OurHerald.com.

Important Cautionary Note

Our Poetry Research Department has uncovered an instance in Mississauga, Ontario, where a man was arrested and convicted for writing a pothole poem and pasting it up around town. Elderly Portuguese native Antonio Batista was upset that a city councilor was not taking their pothole problem seriously. His poem proposed digging a pothole "six feet long and three feet wide and five feet deep to hide her body …"

Here are a couple of samples of what The Herald has in hand:

Limerick

There was an old maid named Miss Prim

Whose budget was really quite slim

So to save quite a lot

Randolph Potholes she sought

Whenever she went for a swim.

(S. Ordinace)

Haiku

Crumbly open wound

Hidden under snowy scab

Coarse words when revealed

(Daniel Mcloughin)