Bob Dylan's dead dog poem for sale

A POEM about a dead dog written by a teenage Bob Dylan is to be sold at auction.

The verse, entitled Little Buddy and handwritten by the singer when he was 16, is expected to fetch up to $15,000 (£9,660).

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

Christie's auction house said the poem was about the murder of a boy's dog, and was "dark and mournful".

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

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

Lisa Heilicher, editor of the camp's Herzl Herald, kept the handwritten original, but decided to sell it to help raise funds for the camp.

She said: "I kept it with all of my stuff that I collected from camp. When I realised how famous he had become, I put it in a piece of plastic and stuck it in an encyclopedia."

Dylan himself authorised the sale, telling officials to "do what you want with [the poem]",