Trial by Verse by Geoffrey Hoffman
by Geoffrey Hoffman
(Shenley, Herts., just north of London, England U.K.)
Here's an example, entitled "Crisis in Court" -
Horror! Counsel's dropped his book,
Waking everyone in Court.
Without this volume, counsel must
Rely on unaccustomed thought.
Counsel's caseless - counsel's lost.
Yet this shattering event
Can't be without precedent?
The usher rises from his nook,
With a condescending look -
Picks the volume up again.
Silence is audible; and then
Counsel with a frown condign
Turns the page and seeks the line
To support his argument.
Thus another crisis passes -
Horror! Counsel's dropped his glasses...
Comic and satiric verse about the law, its makers and practitioners, it was published by Barry Rose, one of the leading Law Publishers in England. His Honor Judge Israel Finestein QC commented that he read this book “with interest, amusement and benefit.” It was also given a favorable reading by several Judges of the Supreme Court, and reviewed with approval in The Jewish Chronicle and in Isthmus Poetry Magazine. The author was interviewed about it, and read extracts, on Three Counties Radio.
Copies may be obtained from Hammicks Legal Bookshop, 191-192 Fleet Street, London (tel. 0207-405-3554) or ordered on-line from fleets@hammicks.co.uk, or from www.amazon.com.
1. The following review was published in The Jewish Chronicle:
Geoffrey Hoffman is a solicitor living in Watford with his wife, daughter, “and the smile on the face of his cat.” A playful cat’s influence is indeed almost discernible in this quite substantial collection of light verse. Most of the pieces cut a satirical swathe through the weird and sometimes wayward contortions of our legal system. Their appeal, however, extends - like the inner musings of a Rumpole - well beyond that bewigged world. Hoffman’s ebullient comic capers burst “the gravity balloon with the needle-point of wit,” though “to laugh at the law is dangerous, for the law cannot laugh at itself. The law is a lion (or some would say, a shark) and its jaws are always open for those who frisk with it.”
Time, I fear, has moved on since the first sentence was written: I have retired and moved from Watford; and my cat, alas, is no more.
2. Review by Maurice James of Isthmus Magazine:
ISBN 1-872328-60-1 (83 pages)
Entertaining and clever, Geoff Hoffman, a retired solicitor, shares with us, in verse, the daily complexities and occurrences within the theater of a Court; each player is likened to a breed of cat - every one different.Pick up this book and you’ll meet the leopard Registrar, the local government ginger tom Solicitor. You’ll find, of course, the litigation panther lawyers, “the hunters in the human jungle”…and even a Martian! You’ll read lines like:
“The Registrar has lost his file -
His papers are aflutter.
Such conduct’s really rather steep:
The Registrar is half asleep,
Concealing it with practiced guile,
Then waking with a splutter.”
and
“And clouds were bright beneath me
As I sang a whisky song.
Then a copper’s car soared by,
Caught me speeding from the sky,
With, “Sir, have you been drinking,
Or learning how to fly?”
and
“I knew my sin: I’d said I wished
that Satan could be shot.
The Court was not concerned with this, and didn’t care a jot.
The only question in their minds was should I be let free,
Or could I have offended,
against subsection three?”
You’ll enjoy this book. I did!
