James McIntyre

The Chaucer of Cheese: Canada's Worst Poet

"Fair Canada is our Theme,
Land of rich cheese, milk and cream."

Also recommended:

The Poet and his Works

James McIntyre (1827-1906) was born in Forres, Scotland and immgrated to Canada at the age of fourteen, in 1841. He first worked as a hired hand at pioneer chores such as clearing land or collecting maple sap; he later became a furniture dealer in St Catherines, Ontario, where he married and had a daughter and a son. He later established a furniture factory in Ingersoll, Ontario. This town of 5000 in Oxford County was the very heart of the dairy and cheese making country.

It was here that McIntyre found his inner muse. He published two volumes of his collected poems: Musings on the Banks of Canadian Thames (1884) and Poems of James McIntyre (1889). McIntyre's poems ranged over a great variety of topics: patriotic themes, Canadian authors, Ontario towns, farming and rural life, foreign wars, poets and philosophers, and moral and reflective topics, to name but a few. McIntyre was never at a loss for words as he composed poems for every type of social gathering: dinners, socials, teas, openings, Freemason and Oddfellow meetings.

McIntyre is most infamous, however, for his poetic musings on the theme of cheese. It was here that he plumbed the very depths of literary form. The cheese poems transcend mere mediocrity, banality, or doggerel; it is on the subject of cheese that James McIntyre has won his crown as Canada's Worst Poet and has become a serious contender for worst poet of the English language.

McIntyre was rediscovered in the 20th Century by William Arthur Deacon, literary editor for the Toronto newspaper, The Mail and Empire, and its successor, The Globe and Mail. Deacon republished some of McIntyre's work in an anthology entitled The Four Jameses (1927), which was reprinted in 1974. His poetry has since been perpetuated in Oh! Queen of Cheese: James McIntyre, the Cheese Poet (Cherry Tree Press, 1979), edited by Roy Abrahamson, and in Very Bad Poetry (Vintage, 1997), edited by Kathryn and Ross Petras.

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