Sorry not been in touch for a while. Bet you've forgotten about me yet again, eh? Guthrum's the name, ruling's the game. Loved Hadleigh so much I was buried there. Not that anyone cares now.

I've been on holiday: a 'staycation' as Squire Derek calls it, to Maldon, Essex. I was gobsmacked to see they have statue of my near-contemporary Beorhtnoth. Can you believe it? He was just an Ealdorman. He wasn't a king, not even royalty. What's all that about?

Squire Derek puts it down to what he calls 'good PR'. Beorhtnoth got name checked in some poem or other for his part in the Battle of Maldon, 991. And he wasn't even on the winning side.

If it ain't memorialised in verse, it didn't happen, as we used to say.

Got me thinking. What I need is a poet to memorialise me. Then it will be easier to get my own statue commissioned. Might even be better than a statue.

Capture the public imagination right and a poem lasts for centuries.

I had my own Bard back in the day. Erik the Well-Read. He was no use to me as he spent all his time writing the epic Beowulf. Which I then had to present to Alfred the 'Great' (debatable) as a 'gift of fealty'.

So my good deeds never got properly recorded. No one remembered my magnificent achievements.

I think the town's Council of Elders knows that feeling.

Anyway, my great idea is a Hadleigh Bardic Poetry Competition.

Minimum length, say, 70 stanzas.

In Old English or Norse if possible. The winner gets to write my life-story as an epic poem.

Figured I'd have a go myself to give you inspiration. I've gone for the 'West Celtic quintain' elegiac form:

There was a great ruler in Hadleigh

But once the King died

They forgot all about Guthrum, sadly

Squire Derek said it was "worthy of the great McGonagall himself", whoever he is. But don't be overawed, I'm sure one or two of you can do better. Maybe even Rowland Taylor's Ghost?

After all, we all have a bit of poetry within us, it just needs bringing out. What was it Erik the Well-Read used to say that put it so aptly? "Poetry is the (something) of the (something), (tum-te tum-te tum) (something something)."

If only I'd got the useless sot to write it down.

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