Dining with Milton and Bunyan and other comic verse

Book excerpt: Peter Goulding's fourth, or maybe fifth, (who's counting?) book of comic verse again delves the murky depths of the poet's imagination. There are still plenty of poems about murdering his wife and disposing of her body but there are darker poems too - the proliferation of tomatoes on Jupiter, the birth of Princess Charlotte and his critiques of the counties of Tipperary and Offaly, to name but four. His mind, which, to be frank, would be put to much better use, learning a trade or simply vegetating, is again employed solving many of the world's problems in rhyming couplets, villanelles and other fiendish weapons of mass destruction. Comes with a cultural health warning.