Comments on: Doing a Pollard

By: TimT

TimT — Fri, 30 May 2008 22:45:33 +0000

Aussie poet Gwen Harwood did it too - she slipped the message FUCKALLEDITORS into one published sonnet. (I once pulled off a similar trick myself, something destined to go unremarked in the murky history of local-council funded youth publishing.) Interesting that those in the UK and Australia seem to prefer to encode swear words into the text, while the US example provided is a comparitively mild and polite nod to his readership!

By: procrustes

procrustes — Fri, 30 May 2008 12:32:54 +0000

Mark, it’s called an acrostic

By: Tom Le Mes

Tom Le Mes — Fri, 30 May 2008 12:25:12 +0000

This happened to A N Wilson a few years back too: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article626718.ece

By: Tom Le Mes

Tom Le Mes — Fri, 30 May 2008 12:24:18 +0000

I remember this happening to A N Wilson a few years back too.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article626718.ece

By: Mark Wadsworth

Mark Wadsworth — Fri, 30 May 2008 09:26:10 +0000

There’s a word used to describe it when the first letter on each line spells something reading downwards.

In a moment of madness at school, when completing a punishment essay for some stupid cow of a French supply teacher, I actually wrote ‘La vache stupide’ down the left hand side of the page and then somehow managed to make the rest of the words fit.

I didn’t get expelled, so obviously she really was stupid, which proved my point.

And she was fat. And it was Rawle who pushed me into her, not the other way round.

By: JuliaM

JuliaM — Fri, 30 May 2008 07:46:50 +0000

But don’t drink too much coffee – it can make you irritable and prone to highlight niggling little points and petty things.

Like Jim.

By: Jim

Jim — Fri, 30 May 2008 06:50:18 +0000

Don’t you mean at the beginning of each sentence? You’ve just got out of bed I take it. Have a coffee before blogging.

Tim adds: Umm, the American did it at the beginning of each paragraph. Pollard at the beginning of each sentence. I mention that the American did it at the beginning of each para….