Girlie Gangs

John Whitworth dreamed he was a poet knowing what rhymed with 'orange', and woke to find he was a winner of verse competitions. Philip Larkin once wrote him a card which he failed to post, and Wendy Cope speaks well of him. He does ballades and pantoums, anagrams and acrostics, rhyming haiku, classical elegies, sonnets grave and gay.