[Jayne Osborn]

Another cheque is on its way - (minus a nought from the last one, but £30 is still welcome!)
This poem was one that failed a recent Speccie (or Oldie?) comp, but as the theme was What If? I thought 'What if I try it again for this one?' And...voila!
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Congratulations, Jayne. You are the winner of our very first rhyming poetry competition. The judges liked the unusual angle on the subject matter and the tension of the dialogue between the snake and the person in the poem.

Your poem is now posted on the website.

The cheque for £30 will be on its way this week.

If you have friends who enjoy writing rhyming poetry we hope you will encourage them to enter our next competition which has a closing date of 30th September.

We wish you luck on your poetic journey and hope that this success will give you encouragement for the future.

Best wishes.

The Rhyme By Design Team.
www.rhymebydesign.com

[Janice D. Soderling]

You know, Jayne, that you are eroding the popular image of a poet starving in a garret.

Hats off again, my friend, well done. And thanks for sharing source information on how to get rich quick.

[John Whitworth]

Thank you Jayne. I shall try my luck. I have ANY AMOUNT of failed Speccies and Oldies.

[Roger Slater]

Nice, Jayne.

But I don't think I'll enter, since the prize isn't a big enough multiple of the entry fee.

[Jayne Osborn]

Yes, I take your point, Bob; it's not free to enter, but £5 for two poems isn't bad. For many UK comps they want that amount per poem - and in almost every case it's free verse that wins, so this rhyming comp attracted me. Turning my fiver into thirty (plus the publicity!) was a reasonable return.

Why not just keep an eye on it and submit once in a while if the theme appeals to you? It's not Speccie level, admittedly, but Every Little Helps, as Tesco say!

[Roger Slater]

Jayne, good luck with that, but you'd have to win one in six competitions just to break even at five quid per, and even more if you entered three at a time. And the glory compared to your usual venues is, shall we say, open to debate. The site mostly features her poems-to-order business. Did your best friend just die and you need to give the eulogy the day after tomorrow? No problem! For a small fee, she'll deliver you the goods and there won't be a dry eye in the house. Seems a wee bit tacky.

[John Whitworth]

Ah, but Roger, the entrance fee will keep all the proverbial Scotchmen from entering. I'll give it a whirl with this, an old thing of mine refurbished. And it's the tackiness that gives it appeal. If we can't beat Pam Ayres (I speak generically at her own game, then what are we? Chesterton thought a painter wasn't worth much if he couldn't knock off a pub sign and I buy into that. Anyway, here's mine, a refurbished piece but - i hope - none the worse for that. I haven't been inside the bookies' for thirty years (and I won -each way!) but this is a kind of poetic bet.

Shades

Guardians of our English coasts,
Gog and Magog, friendly ghosts,
All the wealth of Albion keeping,
Gog and Magog, giants sleeping,
Men of muscle, men of worth
Buried in our English earth.
Gog was such a lovely geezer,
Lived before the days of Caesar.
Magog was his duplicate,
Flourished at the selfsame date.
They were scarcely Mona Lisas,
But (I told you) beezer geezers,
Great guys, straight guys, on-the slate-guys,
Taking-Courage-by-the-crate-guys,
Gog and Magog, heavyweights,
Gog and Magog, perfect mates,
As this rhyme reiterates.

[Martin Elster]

The Black Dog of the Hanging Hills

The Black Dog of the Hanging Hills
***Will tip its head to howl,
Yet nothing issues from its throat,
***Not even a faint growl.

It savors human company
***And charms you with sad eyes
Which, when they turn a fiery red,
***Portend your prompt demise.

The dog who haunts those hoary traprock
***Hills year after year,
By grove or gorge, by rock or pool,
***From nowhere will appear.

It leaves no prints in sand or snow.
***It comes when the sun is bright,
Or at dusk on a crest in the full moon’s glow —
***A shade in pale moonlight.

If once you see it, it’s pure joy;
***If twice, you’ve got bad luck;
If thrice, why, you’ll become Fate’s toy —
***Then you are a dead duck!

I’ve heard of men both strong and meek
***Who, spying that mongrel thrice,
Had, one and all, fallen off West Peak —
***So before you climb, think twice!

[John Whitworth]

Strong start, Martin, but you run out of puff, I think, in your last stanzas.

Penultimate stanza:

'it, it's' is a stutter you probably don't need.
'luck/duck' always an iffy rhyme because you are waiting for the f word to rhyme and it almost seems you've censored yourself, particularly as ''you're a dead duck' scans awkwardly.

Last stanza

The second and fourth lines both scan awkwardly. The word 'ere' though I don't think it's allowable because itis an archaism, would clear it up in the last line. Some other solution must be found. @Srong and meek' and 'one and all' are both weak phrases.

Perhaps cutting down the number of stanzas would be a good idea. I do not think the poem 'earns its length' as the poet Anthony Thwaite (who generally keeps things short) would say. Four stanzas, maybe five?

[Roger Slater]

I don't get it. Do you mean that if anyone were to put up a £30 prize and declare a contest, you'd enter that as well and even pay for the privilege of being judged by someone you never heard of and who writes poems like this woman writes? Have you actually read her site, in particular the poems that she sells?

I do like your poems, though.