Poetry review – A NIGHT AT THE SNOOKER: Eithne Cullen is won over by David Floyd’s dry humour and eye for the ridiculous
A Night at the Snooker
David Floyd
Hearing Eye 2026
ISBN: 9 781905 082834
53pp £10.00
The back cover promises that ‘David Floyd finds plenty of subjects to satirise’ and his collection delivers on that promise. His style is conversational, in many ways, and if you’ve ever heard him read (there are some of his performances on Insta, too) you’ll hear a restrained humour in a laconic style of delivery. The poems on the page live up to that style of setting up humourous and satirical situations.
The collection is called after the opening poem, in which Floyd presents nine scenes describing the experience of watching snooker at Alexandra Palace as ‘It is the ultimate English sporting experience’. The poem goes on to draw on events, commentary and mentions of who’s in the audience. The humour is restrained and sometimes fanciful – ‘I imagine Ed Milliband playing David Milliband at snooker’. Floyd takes us right to the end of the match and shares the result of the competition.
The collection then moves from the snooker table with a total of thirty-four poems, on a wide range of subjects. There are observational poems, fantastical and absurd poems. In “The President’s Dog” he takes us into the absurd world of Conan the mastiff, who, even though a dead dog (read that as you will):
continues to advise
the president on strategy
In similar vein, there’s a poem about training his goldfish to be a pole vaulter: because, this goldfish
lacks a sense of purpose,
For years, he has done nothing
f any practical value…
And “Public service announcement” takes the idea that:
Customers using the escalators
must carry pets at all times
to its logical conclusion that travellers might need to borrow or even simulate a pet to enable their journey to go ahead.
The humour is crafted in such a way that it’s hard not to smile.“Richard Dawkins in the curry house (Oxford)” is about an imaginary sighting of the famous academic, or as Floyd presents him ‘scourge of God’. The picture he paints is of a man having a break from his anger and the observer poet holds back from sharing his views to let him have his curry in peace.
Floyd’s humour reaches other well known people too; Churchill makes an appearance (along with other former PMs Wilson, Baldwin and Bonar law) in a fantasy built around the real event when Churchill’s dentures were sold at auction.
In “Unpopular opinions” he confronts the dilemma of wanting Lawrence Fox back as Lewis’ detective side kick, even though Fox is more famous for other reasons s, these days. He points out that:
Most people had never heard of Oxford
till the 1970s when Colin Dexter
put it on the map through detective fiction
But then, quite seriously, he wants to know:
How could it ever be appropriate
they ask, for the role of a policeman
to be played by a racist?
Poems cover many aspects of strange conversations in pubs and over office lunch breaks, including “Invention” that begins: ‘My friend Tony tells us he invented talk radio’. He elicits humour from a dead pigeon, mannequins and other situations.
His work, very much in the tradition of English satire, touches on real issues, too. He’s included poems about flood risks (“Bad Luck”), climate change (“The sun is out in February”) and voting systems. The poems are engaging, funny and thought provoking. In fact, I didn’t need him to point it out, but his poems and his sense of fun and the ridiculous empower him to tackle serious issues on the principle that
…social change is about
engaging with people where they are.
Nov 12 2026
London Grip Poetry Review – David Floyd
Poetry review – A NIGHT AT THE SNOOKER: Eithne Cullen is won over by David Floyd’s dry humour and eye for the ridiculous
A Night at the Snooker
David Floyd
Hearing Eye 2026
ISBN: 9 781905 082834
53pp £10.00
The back cover promises that ‘David Floyd finds plenty of subjects to satirise’ and his collection delivers on that promise. His style is conversational, in many ways, and if you’ve ever heard him read (there are some of his performances on Insta, too) you’ll hear a restrained humour in a laconic style of delivery. The poems on the page live up to that style of setting up humourous and satirical situations.
The collection is called after the opening poem, in which Floyd presents nine scenes describing the experience of watching snooker at Alexandra Palace as ‘It is the ultimate English sporting experience’. The poem goes on to draw on events, commentary and mentions of who’s in the audience. The humour is restrained and sometimes fanciful – ‘I imagine Ed Milliband playing David Milliband at snooker’. Floyd takes us right to the end of the match and shares the result of the competition.
The collection then moves from the snooker table with a total of thirty-four poems, on a wide range of subjects. There are observational poems, fantastical and absurd poems. In “The President’s Dog” he takes us into the absurd world of Conan the mastiff, who, even though a dead dog (read that as you will):
continues to advise
the president on strategy
In similar vein, there’s a poem about training his goldfish to be a pole vaulter: because, this goldfish
lacks a sense of purpose,
For years, he has done nothing
f any practical value…
And “Public service announcement” takes the idea that:
Customers using the escalators
must carry pets at all times
to its logical conclusion that travellers might need to borrow or even simulate a pet to enable their journey to go ahead.
The humour is crafted in such a way that it’s hard not to smile.“Richard Dawkins in the curry house (Oxford)” is about an imaginary sighting of the famous academic, or as Floyd presents him ‘scourge of God’. The picture he paints is of a man having a break from his anger and the observer poet holds back from sharing his views to let him have his curry in peace.
Floyd’s humour reaches other well known people too; Churchill makes an appearance (along with other former PMs Wilson, Baldwin and Bonar law) in a fantasy built around the real event when Churchill’s dentures were sold at auction.
In “Unpopular opinions” he confronts the dilemma of wanting Lawrence Fox back as Lewis’ detective side kick, even though Fox is more famous for other reasons s, these days. He points out that:
Most people had never heard of Oxford
till the 1970s when Colin Dexter
put it on the map through detective fiction
But then, quite seriously, he wants to know:
How could it ever be appropriate
they ask, for the role of a policeman
to be played by a racist?
Poems cover many aspects of strange conversations in pubs and over office lunch breaks, including “Invention” that begins: ‘My friend Tony tells us he invented talk radio’. He elicits humour from a dead pigeon, mannequins and other situations.
His work, very much in the tradition of English satire, touches on real issues, too. He’s included poems about flood risks (“Bad Luck”), climate change (“The sun is out in February”) and voting systems. The poems are engaging, funny and thought provoking. In fact, I didn’t need him to point it out, but his poems and his sense of fun and the ridiculous empower him to tackle serious issues on the principle that
…social change is about
engaging with people where they are.