Penguin is publishing The Collected Poems by Adrian Mole - in the character's own imprint Mole Press - to celebrate the 50th birthday of Sue Townsend's creation, the Bookseller has reported.

The book, which will be published as a paperback on 16 March in time for World Poetry Day, is a collection of the character's poems from all eight of his diaries, brought together for the first time. It will include poems such as his debut ‘The Tap’ – “The tap drips and keeps me awake, / In the morning there will be a lake …”,  odes to his muse and only true love Pandora ("Pandora! / I adore ya. / I implore ye / Don't ignore me."), as well as his burgeoning political anger about Mrs Thatcher: “Do you weep, Mrs Thatcher, do you weep? / Do you wake, Mrs Thatcher, in your sleep? / Do you weep like a sad willow? / On your Marks and Spencer's pillow? / Are your tears molten steel? /Do you weep?”

His poetry is seen as being more crafted and sophisticated than that of his near-contemporary, Private Eye's EJ Thribb. And Mole's political antenna was always acute. His ‘Ode to Engels’ open with these lines: “Engels, you catalogued the misfortunes of the poor in days of yore, / Little thinking that the poor would still be with us in nearly 1984.”

All eight diaries are being republished to mark the occasion. Townsend first introduced Adrian (then Nigel) in a BBC Radio 4 play in 1982, with The Secret Diary ... published later that same year, and the series running until book eight Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years in 2009 (Penguin). The Leicester-bred character's fictional birth year is in 1967.