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Roses are red
Violets are blue
If this is how your Valentine's poem starts
For the sake of your relationship, please keep reading.
Like oxygen-rich blood, poetry comes from the heart. But what's a well-meaning guy to do when he is less of a Yeats and more of a yutz?
Happily, enter Ross Williams, poet for hire at commissionapoem.com.
For about $80, Williams will write a personalized, four-verse, 16-line poem for your sweetie. He generally requires a week, but understands that love sometimes can't wait that long. And that Valentine's gifts sometimes get put off until the last minute.
"[Urgent requests] nearly always come from men," Williams said. "Believe me, I can empathize, because I am one."
Williams, a 29-year-old Briton who lives in north London, got his start a few years ago. Knowing his love for writing poetry, friends asked him to write poems for their weddings. Word began to spread. With the increased demand, a business bloomed. He set up a Web site --- surprisingly, commissionapoem.com had yet to be claimed --- a couple of years ago.
Now, the orders arrive in such number, some from the United States, that Williams is considering hiring another poet. Williams usually can craft about four poems a day.
On his site, Williams asks for the name and relationship of the poem's recipient, the occasion and personal information. Not all of it is so helpful.
Said the poet, "You're not going to mention [English soccer club] Manchester United, but those kinds of details give you a flavor of the person, and why they have a connection with the person."
Williams gets most of his orders for weddings and anniversaries --- though one client summoned Williams to write a break-up poem.
"Which I thought was a little harsh, but I accepted it," Williams said.
"I thought it was better than by text [message] or something."
But business spikes around this time of year. When he began, he suspected most of his customers would be men seeking to woo. He has found, though, most of the woo-seekers are women, about 70 percent.
"I do wonder whether the women order it as an expression of something that maybe they would like to be receiving," he said.
Williams promises bang for your buck, eros for your euros. He says that each poem is different and that, while a few customers have asked for slight revisions, no one has demanded a new poem.
"I certainly don't think I'm Byron or Keats or something,'' he said. "It's a million miles removed from that. At the same time, it's something just so unique."
As you might expect, Williams said he "absolutely adores" his job, which supplements his freelance writing income.
As for his Valentine's plans, he is taking his girlfriend on a date. And, yes, he expects to give her a poem.
"If I do write for my girlfriend, I have to be careful that I don't use anything she might have read before. That would not be good," said Williams, before a careful clarification. "I'm just kidding."
Copyright 2006 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
