LitRev (Results + Next Comp details)
 

This long-running, prestigious competition was introduced to the sphere only last month; no winners among us (yet) but, as is often the case with The Oldie and The Spectator, there are just four prizes this month. (Big ones for 1st and 2nd placed poems.)

We'll keep it to one thread each month, so post your entries here for the next comp, which must be about, in some way or another, 'Intelligence.' Entries should rhyme and scan, in 24 lines or fewer, and the deadline is 30th June.
Send them to: editorial@literaryreview.co.uk

Here is the Competition Report by the magazine's Deputy Editor, Tom Fleming:

THIS MONTH'S POEMS were a mixed bunch, but J R Gillie deservedly takes first prize and Noel Petty comes second with what was the most original take on the subject of 'hangover' that we received. Gillie wins £300, kindly sponsored by the Mail on Sunday, and Petty wins £100; all others printed receive £10. The use of controlled half-rhyme is still acceptable, by the way; I have always liked Ted Hughes's 'October Dawn' for its mix of half and full rhymes

First Prize
The Hangover by J R Gillie
Your face was like a battlefield, and bore
in ruddy fissures and redoubts the signs
of last night, and of eighty years and more
in which you sometimes took your own advice:
Sip claret; swill champagne. 'Forget the wines,'
sighed Lady Astor, 'spirits are his vice.'

I, your physician, tip-toeing forward saw
your dragon robe, abandoned on the floor.
Could it but speak! Your own throat was too raw
with last night's smoke to raise a croak,
still less to awe me with the lion's roar.
I wondered if you'd had another stroke.

'Soup is a sad affair!' You rumbled out,
a mountainous landscape quaking in the bed.
Your lower lip relaxed its bulldog pout;
your tongue shaped sibilants and vowels as though
slurping the fatty broth which you'd been fed
last night. 'Moran,' you growled. 'Go.'

Up Hyde Park Gate, to modern times I strode,
and left you to your late-Victorian dream,
of Omdurman, who knows. In the main road
I broke out: 'Man is Spirit!' Quite absurd.
The brain is just a pudding with no theme.
And yet - a splendid hangover, my word!

Second Prize
Coelacanth by Noel Petty
Apparently I ought not to be here,
some hundred million years beyond my prime.
But must I feel obliged to disappear
because the paleontologists call 'Time'?
I've had my chances: see these curious fins?
They move, some say, just like a walking horse.
I could be celebrating Derby wins
if I had shown a little more resource.
I tried it once: crawled up a muddy strand,
choked on the air, blinked in the painful light,
found that I didn't like the look of land,
and shuffled back to ocean's grateful night.
As to the rest, there isn't much to say:
feeding and breeding out of Darwin's view
until some trawler had a lucky day
and fed the world's strange lust for something new.
That was a nasty shock, but soon the fright
wore off. We were no use for oil or food
and thus resumed our life, so tuned, so right
that Evolution couldn't well intrude.
Sometimes in idle hours I muse upon
the great conundrum: what does it all mean?
But that's one for the world, while we sleep on
blessed with our lack-of-curiosity gene.

Hangover by D A Prince
I do not want to think. It hurts. Each thought's
too loud. The barbed wire rusting in my brain
is some mistake. I am not me. All sorts
of vermin have conspired to burrow pain
into my skull. So. One word at a time.
Ahhh. Slowly. Slower. Stop. There might be light
beyond my eyelids. Inside there's just grime.
I don't think I am strong enough for sight.
That moving ceiling isn't funny: it's
a trick to make me throw up in my shoes.
I blame the Government - their nanny fits
to turn the nation's poets off their booze.
They might be right. But no. That would be Hell.
I'll keep my eyes tight shut. All may be well.

An Old-Fashioned Rambler by Alanna Blake
He pointed. 'She's a hangover that one,
A crimson hangover. Been happy there
Well over eighty years. She gets the sun
And shelter from the wind. That wall is where
the garden ended: it's a carpark now,
But my old beauty still survives somehow.

She blooms through litter, petrol fumes and dust
With barely space for earth around her roots;
Still healthy, no black spot or mould or rust,
And every spring I come to watch the shoots
Burst green along the wrinkled greying bark,
Defying the pollution of the park.

Each autumn as the shrinking petals fall
And leaves go yellow, then I feel afraid
That I won't see her overhang the wall
Another year. I will be first to fade.'
He smiled. Inhaled. 'A great old-fashioned smell.'
Then limped away. The exit-barrier fell.

I'm wondering whether some words were omitted from S2L4 and S4L6 when the magazine was published (?), but the poems have been reproduced here exactly as they appear in Literary Review. (Sorry, there was one typo which was down to me, corrected now.)

I'm afraid it's way past midnight here so don't expect me to kick this one off with any 'Intelligence', the way John does with The Speccie and The Oldie. Over to all of you!

Jayne, I wonder how loosely you can interpret these one word titles?

These all-embracing titles are a feature of the competition. I don't like them. They give you no clues. Practically anything could fit, really. Oh, and the chap doesn't like funnies much, which may partly account for my own lack of success.

Still. Faint heart never and all that. Here's a cutdown version of an old thing of mine.

Intelligence

We have made ourselves shelters, deep underground shelters
One hundred and fifty feet down,
Each the size of a house, and, at thirty-three thousand,
This counts as a fairly large town.
What we’ve got is an Oxford, an underground Oxford
Prepared in advance of the crisis:
Like the beat of a drum it will come: as shares plummet
With rising commodity prices
Which will trigger a slump in demand and the dumping
Of consequent overproductions,
Bringing general disquiet with rapine and riot
And other regrettable ructions.
I mean lootings and arsons, garrottings of parsons,
Gang-rapings of teachers and nuns,
Major terrorist strikes – you’ll have not seen the like
Since the sacking of Rome by the Huns.
It’s an old-fashioned way we could do with today
With your armies of Socialist Workers,
Who just sit on their bums, while rotating their thumbs
And convening committees of shirkers.
In the fret and the fuss when the bombs drop on us
Or, in truth, when the bombs drop on you,
With us safe underground there’ll be no one around
Who can tell you poor sods what to do!

Is anyone going to enter this comp?
I'll admit the chances are slim, with so few making it to the page, but the kudos of having a poem in Literary Review is immense, believe me!
A tenner is only available to non-subscribers, not the big money, but re-read the previous sentence if you're still pondering. Worth having a punt, surely?

I have entered it with the poem above. Let's see. Incidentally, I don't see any bar in the rules against using a poem already published. Can you see anything, Jayne?

I did have a printed copy of the LR rules John, many years ago, when Auberon Waugh was the editor. I haven't got it now but I can't remember whether or not it included previously published poems. I haven't checked on their website; is that where you've been looking? There's nothing about the comp rules in the magazine, as far as I'm aware.

I do recall that one of the (then) rules was that "No poet shall phone this office for any reason, under any circumstances" or words to that effect. Oo-er!! Do you suppose they have a blacklist of people who've inadvertantly called them?

PS John. Is that a typo: do you mean 'raping and riot'? Forget that - I just looked it up. Sorry, 'rapine' is a word I'd never heard of. Great poem btw.

I think rape is just one example of rapine. The Vikings went in for it a lot. And the German Officers who crossed the Rhine. And the Russians in 1945. And The Black Prince I gather from today's wireless.

***************************

Oh - as if. No, dry your eyes - he meant "our" Black Prince - the son of Edward the Third and Philippa of Hainault. The best king England never had. That's because he died before his father so couldn't prove anybody wrong. Edward III was eventually succeeded by the son of the Black Prince, Richard the Second, whose rapine was of a more specialised sort.

*******************

Ann is absolutely right. The Black Prince is buried in a very splendid tomb in Canterbury cathedral. He did for the French twice at Crecy and Poitiers. Henry V made it 3-nil at Agincourt, though it has to be said that Joan of Arc turned the whole thing round with a bravura second half performance. However, History tell us the poor girl was toast.

Henry VI Part One is the Bard's compilation on that last

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I always lose track of these things... What happened to their competition on "ghosts"?

Hasn't happened yet, Gail.There's a two month turn-round with these ones, not like the Speccie. I am a subscriber on-line and (I think) Jayne is a subscriber of the paper copy. So nothing will escape us.

Yes, that's right John. I have a glossy paper fetish so I get the mag through the letterbox each month.

Last minute attempt at this one:

Mother Care

"I'd like a pair of those rubber gloves,"
says my Mother, (aged eighty four)
and during the next ten minutes or so
says the same thing four times more.
The "rubber gloves" are just napkins, which
are folded and stacked in a pile;
the waitress brings us a pot of tea,
with a false and indulgent smile.

This is the mother who taught me well,
to love literature and art,
who can't remember my children's names
but knows ‘Adelstrop’ by heart.
“She used to be so intelligent,”
I’m often heard to explain.
“Until a couple of months ago
there was nothing wrong with her brain.”

In her day she’d been a magistrate:
highly respected, and clever.
Retirement had brought new challenges;
she was always busy. However,
we leave the cafe, our roles reversed;
me, with a child whom I love.
I denounce senility and then...
...wipe my eyes on a rubber glove.