Good writing can give you a vision of the writer’s world, of their characters, of their homes and countries, their clothing, their emotions, moods and actions. But great writing can transport you. You can get to the point when you forget you’re sat in your living room chair, or lying in your holiday hammock, or stood in the supermarket queue, and you’re with the characters, in the pages, within the chapters, living the story.

It’s refreshing when this is done with use of dialect. Reddit user Recessive posted this to the poetry_critics subreddit and I think it’s brilliant. Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting is an example of how immediate the transportation process is and this poem does the same. It only takes one quick phrase or sentence. Of course, sometimes the dialect is quite hard to pick up but when it clicks, it gives you a true taste of character and setting all in one.

Recessive has kindly let us share Old Man Warning – it’s a real gem and we hope you enjoy it!

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Old Man Warning

Best fear’a ’em candy cane
Petch tants ‘an ‘locks
Th’ fest’vals Juggl’as
Stripe col’r socks

Word ’round Suzie’s
th’ merry g’ round
Rode up’n down
wit’ th’ carn’val sound

‘Weet lit’l Suzie
B’an missin fa’ years
Kissd ‘tha m ‘gician
Done roped’ up’er tears

Him snuck und’them flo’boards
Tip-toe’ ne’er stop’d
Ma’am I done seen ‘lots
W’ere m ‘rocknchair rocks