James McIntyre: The Mammoth Cheese

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From the author of John Passfield: Saturday Morning, shortlisted for the ReLit Awards in the novel category, 2022

With the contribution of eight hundred cows, the tiny village of Ingersoll, Ontario, has not only produced the world’s largest block of cheese, it has also nurtured the epic poet who can rapturously sing its praises. Now, if only Queen Victoria can be persuaded to take a hearty bite and add her majestic voice to the poet’s ecstatic hymns of praise, the Mammoth Cheese will become the edible jewel in the crown of the globe-girdling British Empire.

James McIntyre (1828-1906) won fame as the Cheese Poet of Ingersoll, Ontario, although his verse dealt with many other subjects as well. His best-known poem, Ode on the Mammoth Cheese Weighing Over 7,000 Pounds, celebrated an actual (and immense) block of cheese produced in the town in 1866. Drawing on the legacy of McIntyre’s poetry and the scanty biographical details still extant, novelist John Passfield creates a moving portrait of a man whose artistic ambitions perhaps outstripped his abilities, and the small 19th-century town that was his home. As the author notes, One wonders whether McIntyre was not wiser than the cheese poems seem to suggest.