Speccie Double Dactyl
 

I've just been trying to write a piece on these competitions. I said there were three winners who outpaced all the rest. nd here they are. Bazza, Bill Greenwell and Chris O'Carroll. Well done chaps, we always knew you had it in you. I got an hon mensh, as you se. There were two of us stood outside the door for being rude.

The new competition is a cinch. If I don't win something I'll eat my hat. I've done loads of these. But so have you, I expect. On! On!

No. 2737: Double dactyl
You are invited to submit a double dactyl, i.e., a poem of two quatrains, of which the last line of the first rhymes with the last line of the second. All the lines except the rhyming ones, which are truncated, are composed of two dactylic feet. The first line of the first stanza is a double dactylic nonsense line (e.g., higgledy-piggledy/jiggery-pokery). The second must be a double dactylic name. At least one line of the second stanza (ideally the antepenultimate one) must be one double dactylic line that is one word long, e.g., ‘va-le-dic-tor-i-an’. Please email entries, if possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 29 February.

We did this for a 'Staggers' comp about three months ago.

Indeed we did Jayne. And I'm sure I won't be the only one dusting off some non-winners from that comp. Although that one specified contemporary figures with double-dactylic names. This one doesn't exclude figures from the past (nor fictional characters, for that matter), so I'll also try to come up with some fresh, new entries.

Tssskety-taskety,
Ellen DeGeneres,
Penney’s new spokeswoman
Bigots deplore.

If she’s not sacked, they say,
Hyperemphatically,
They’ll buy their pitchforks at
Some other store.

With apologies to Chris (he knows why) -
Does this ring even the vaguest of bells among Brits?

Vaguest of the vague bells for me, Frank. I remember Ellen de G suddenly declaring herself to be gay, but Penny and pitchforks don't chime with me!

Mind you, I hardly ever watch telly, so don't take this as the general viewpoint.

Jayne

Hickory Dickory,
Lucinda Vickery.
Staggers did this one quite
recently. Drat!

People will send you their
dismally-dactylly
trickery poetic
failures from that.

Nice one, Jayne. Someone somewhere said That nobody had ever done one with Titus Andronicus. Well now.

Higgledy-piggledy,
Titus Andronicus
Didn't have lots of
Success as a dad,

Antediluvian,
Monomaniacal.
But as a cook he was
Not at all bad.

How many of these are you allowed to send in one e-mail?

Good question. I don't know. Ten? How many did the Staggers allow, Jayne?

I emailed Lucy about this & she said she would allow 2 & would announce it in next Speccie.

Try this, Jayne:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1269588.html

I'd not signed on for about 3 years, encouraged back by a member whom I met at a different site.
As an occasional (and generally unsuccessful) U.S. submitter to Spectator, I am always uncertain on matters of knowing one's audience and striking the proper tone with entries. (And I say this with full knowledge that we in the U.S. have more than our share of pecksniffian peculiarities. The recent contest for a reply to Larkin's 'fuck you up' poem, for instance, would never have seen the light of day with something such as the Washington Post contests.)
My question, then: Is 'tossers' considered too coarse for use in The Spectator? I wouldn't want to include a term that would be practically an automatic disqualifier, particularly when there's any number of 2-syllable deprecations that could stand in just as easily.

Hi Brendan,

Welcome to the 'Sphere', and to D & A in particular! I hope we'll soon see your name in The Speccie.

'Tossers' (IMO) isn't too coarse, whereas (which you may have been hinting at) 'wankers' possibly is, in certain quarters. We're generally not that 'precious' or prissy about saying-it-like-it-is over here, though.

"Pecksniffian peculiarities" is a superb phrase!

Jayne

PS. Thanks for that link, Bazza. (Don't you think she looks like a female Michael Schumacher?)

Thanks for the counsel, Jayne.