Adolf Hitler was a woman!

  26th September 2011

University of Gloucestershire Post-grad student Angela France has surely won the prize for finding the most unlikely publishing outlet. If you’d said that Angela’s acclaimed poetry had recently featured in a national newspaper, my first guess would have been The Guardian. The Times? The Independent? No, the Sunday Sport! Some time ago, Angela wrote a poem inspired by a Sunday Sport headline: ‘Hide & Seek Champ found Dead in Cupboard’. After the poem was shortlisted for the Arvon Competition, and published in Angela’s latest collection, Lessons In Mallemaroking, a Sunday Sport journalist spotted it online. After contacting Angela, the newspaper published it in full on 21st August 2011. As the accompanying article explains, ‘A top poet has used a classic Sunday Sport headline as inspiration for an ode which was shortlisted for a nationwide prize.’ Alas, copyright laws prevent us from picturing the relevant pages, but it’s worth mentioning that other headlines on the double page spread include ‘Adolf Hitler was a woman’ and ‘Lez lover attacked with dildo.’