Dylan dead dog poem to go on sale

Bob Dyan wrote the poem for the summer camp newspaper Enlarge Image

A poem Bob Dylan wrote about a dead dog when he was a teenager is to be sold at auction next month.

The handwritten piece, called Little Buddy, is expected to fetch up to $15,000 (£9,660).

Dylan was just 16 - and still going by his given name Bob Zimmerman - when he wrote the two-page poem in 1957 during a stay at summer camp Wisconsin.

Christie's auction house described it as a "dark and mournful poem, about the murder of a boy's dog".

'Brilliance'

"I'll meet my precious buddy up in the sky / By a tiny narrow grave / Where the willows sadly wave," the poem reads.

Dylan wrote the piece for Herzl Herald, which was the summer camp's newspaper.

Fellow camper and editor Lisa Heilicher kept the handwritten original, but has decided to sell it, to help raise funds for the project.

"I kept it with all of my stuff that I collected from camp," she said.

"When I realised how famous he had become, I put it in a piece of plastic and stuck it in an encyclopaedia."

"It's a very early example of his brilliance," said Simeon Lipman, a pop culture specialist at Christie's .

"It comes from the mind of a teenager [with] some very interesting thoughts kind of percolating in his brain."

Several other pieces of Dylan's writing are being offered at the pop culture sale, including lyrics for the song With God on Our Side.

The song, which appeared on the musician's third album The Times They Are A-Changin', has been estimated to sell for up to $25,000 (£16,121).