{"id":630479,"date":"2026-09-20T12:54:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T12:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/630479\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T12:54:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T12:54:11","slug":"dominic-west-backs-top-shagger-byron-in-poetry-battle-with-bob-geldof-dominic-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/630479\/","title":{"rendered":"Dominic West backs \u2018top shagger\u2019 Byron in poetry battle with Bob Geldof | Dominic West"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dominic West has said Lord Byron is his favourite poet because he was a \u201ctop shagger\u201d and said he was not concerned the rise of AI might snuff out poetry.<\/p>\n

The actor was taking part in a \u201cpoetry battle\u201d at the Big Brue festival in Somerset, against rock star Bob Geldof<\/a>, who said he preferred the Irish poet WB Yeats to the excesses of Byron.<\/p>\n

West said of Byron, who was one of the great Romantic poets: \u201cByron was shagging everything. Byron was the proto-rock star. He was a top shagger.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also said he was unconcerned that AI might stop humans from writing poetry, and added that today\u2019s rappers are the new poets.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomeone described to me the last thing that AI is going to take over is standup comedy,\u201d West said, \u201cbut it\u2019ll definitely be poetry because no machine could ever get to someone\u2019s soul like these guys can, and I think that\u2019s one thing that\u2019s safe from AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cPoetry is still being written. Rappers are people writing amazing poetry every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Byron, famed for poems such as She Walks in Beauty and the unfinished epic Don Juan, went into self-enforced exile because of mounting financial debts, as well as rumours that he was sleeping with his half-sister, and accusations of homosexual behaviour which was illegal at the time.<\/p>\n

West, who is best known for his roles in The Wire and The Affair, added: \u201cThere was all sorts of reasons for his exile and being cancelled, and so I, you know, but actually he\u2019s a towering figure.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe unfortunately towers above Yeats. I mean, Yeats is an incredible poet and a wonderful man; you wouldn\u2019t possibly hesitate to call him a legend. You\u2019d certainly hesitate to call him a man who enjoyed sex.\u201d<\/p>\n

The actor then recited She Walks in Beauty, and said: \u201cByron wrote this one after an all-night party, as he was getting undressed, drunk, about a woman he\u2019d just seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Geldof, former lead singer of the Boomtown Rats, acknowledged that his literary hero, Yeats, was not a \u201cshagger\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cHe only got shagged when he was, I think, 31 by Olivia Shakespear, and he was very practical about the whole thing. But it drove a vast energy into his poetry.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Yeats, the Irish poet who wrote such famed poems as The Second Coming, was one of the giants of 20th-century literature. He is known for his lyricism and his writing on Irish political struggles, including the 1916 Easter Rising, an armed rebellion by Irish Republicans against English rule.<\/p>\n

Geldof said that Yeats is the greatest poet the world has ever seen, adding: \u201cYeats is to us [Irish people] what Shakespeare is to the English.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe didn\u2019t just set about writing the most beautiful lyric love poetry ever, but some of the most impassioned contemporary poetry. A lot of which you know has gone out to the world and is constantly recited in newspaper headlines.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe set up the first Irish ballet school. He set up the first Irish National Theatre. He revived the Irish language.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dominic West has said Lord Byron is his favourite poet because he was a \u201ctop shagger\u201d and said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":630480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-630479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}