speccie Comp Results Mixing it
 

Competition: Mixing it

LUCY VICKERY
SATURDAY, 18TH FEBRUARY 2012

In Competition No. 2734 you were invited to provide anagrams of lines from Shakespearean sonnets.
These assignments are not the most popular but every so often the urge to send you to anagram hell gets the better of me. ‘I found this competition exasperatingly difficult,’ wrote Josephine Boyle. Equally exasperated, it seems, was Basil Ransome-Davies, whose email subject line read: ‘Everlasting fire for this one’. Shirley Curran expressed her frustration anagrammatically: It is rather gawky to reinvent bards! (It is the star to every wand’ring bark). While W.J. Webster injected a refreshing note of cheeriness: ‘Lovely competition! Two Scrabble sets and a laptray — the insomniac’s dream!’
But I am not alone in inflicting such torture. This fiendish challenge was set by my predecessor and elicited some fine winners: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?/ Hurrah! See my mice tootle a sad psalm. (Frances Rhodes); My glass shall not persuade me I am old/ Shampoo me, lass, I’m slate-grey and dull. (N.E. Soret)

Despite the rumbles of discontentment, you, too, pulled it out of the bag, producing some delightfully surreal offerings. I was amused by John Whitworth’s scatological submission, and there was a nice postscript to Brian Allgar’s ribald entry ‘If there be lewdness, blame it on my betters —/ ’Twas W.S. who gave me all the letters.’
The winners are printed below. Basil Ransome-Davies earns £25; G.M. Davis and Sylvia Smith £20; Bill Greenwell and Chris O’Carroll £15. Nicholas Holbrook, whose anagrams of a patchwork of sonnet lines can be read as a reasonably coherent whole, nabs £60.

Alas! tis true, I have gone here and there
I hate teeth, I! Also veneer, sugar, and her,
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
my Ma. I hate the foul barmy dentist, too; he,
Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear
Twill — why, he saw beauty, where I — toothless hags
If the dull substance of my flesh were thought
He hunts chewy gifts; the molars feel doubtful;
Canst thou, O cruel! say I love thee not
loose teeth rot. Uh! Cavity — so unclean!
Lo! in the orient when the gracious light
He: ‘I’ll toughen the rotting incisor. Ah ...we
Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now
whiten fur teeth.’ ‘How?’ ‘With oven enamel.’
If there be nothing new, but that which is
I watch ...Feh! Rubbish! Teeth not whitening!
My love is strengthened, though more weak in seeming
My mood? I hate gums, veins, green teeth, gin, Nero, whelks,
Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest
and gunky school stew. Vilest of all, I hate teeth!
Nicholas Holbrook

You had a father, let your son say so
A lousy oyster, a soft, unheard ‘ahoy’
Or gluttoning on all, or all away
A royal law, not a lounging troll
Love is a babe, then might I not say so
A naiveté hobbles a hot misogynist
It fears not policy that heretic
Fate, sir — a ricochet potently hit
Basil Ransome-Davies

And they are rich and ransom all ill deeds
A dry, heathen dreamland sells rancid oil
The scope and tenure of thy jealousy
Yon joyful usherette phones a cadet
To set a form upon desired change
Grandee chides footman posture
G.M. Davis

Alas! ’tis true, I have gone here and there
Hirsute, elated, eager to shave, he ran in
Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Reg, Fulham man, ingeniously irons a vole
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
‘Yo, ho, ho’, I hummed bitterly, ‘fat ants ate me’
Sylvia Smith

Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.
Settee, film: snog this very skimpy thigh
Tired with all these for restful death I cry
Life’s a hot cherry treat: flirt, whistle, dude!
Bill Greenwell

Who will believe my verse in time to come
Welcome violent movie with beery smile
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
We resent caricatures of far seedier emirs
Chris O’Carroll