West calls Byron 'top shagger' in poetry battle with Geldof — SkimNews
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- Dominic West called Lord Byron a "top shagger" and "proto-rock star" during a "poetry battle" against Bob Geldof at the Big Brue festival in Somerset, declaring Byron his favourite poet over Yeats.
- West said he is unconcerned AI will end poetry, arguing it is "safe from AI" because "no machine could ever get to someone's soul" — and contended that today's rappers "are people writing amazing poetry every day."
- Bob Geldof championed WB Yeats as his hero, conceding Yeats "only got shagged" once at around age 31 by Olivia Shakespear but saying that experience "drove a vast energy into his poetry."
- Geldof called Yeats "the greatest poet the world has ever seen," and noted Yeats set up the first Irish ballet school, the first Irish National Theatre, and helped revive the Irish language.
- West recited Byron's "She Walks in Beauty," noting Byron wrote it after an all-night party while drunk and getting undressed, about a woman he'd just seen.
- West acknowledged Byron's self-imposed exile was driven by mounting debts, rumours he was sleeping with his half-sister, and accusations of homosexual behaviour that was illegal at the time.
Why it matters: Two celebrities used irreverent banter about their poets' sex lives to stage a live literary spectacle, a format that leans on Byron's romantic-mythic charisma to make poetry marketable. Geldof's rebuttal grounded the debate in Yeats's institutional legacy — founding Ireland's national theatre and ballet school — while West's framing treated Byron as a rebellious rock-star archetype, revealing how poetry is repackaged for contemporary festival audiences.
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