Thisis all a bit in the English reminiscence mode, but why not. These competitions may be one of our most lasting literary monuments. 1. Was Martin Fagg in fact a Shrewsbury schoolmaster? 2. It's true: Fiona Pitt-Kethley did (does?) look a bit like a hat-stand when you would have thought she'd look like the blowsy version of Diana Dors. She gave me marsala and fruit-cake once and proved to have a very sound classical education. Her house in Hastings had the Pompeii mosaic of the dog with cave canem set into the hall floor. For our transatlantic readers, Fiona Pitt-Kethley, as well as being a competition winner (as was her mother Olive, with whom she lived) enjoyed a certain brief but considerable fame as a priapic poet and quarrelled publicly with the Faber Martian poet, Craig Raine, about whether he had, or had not, actually read any of her poetry collection 'Sky Ray Lolly' before turning it down. I interviewed her for a Sunday newspaper and used to possess her notorious book, but I seem to have lost it. It sold very well, better than any of mine and, I suspect, better than any of Craig's too, but mine was (I stoutly aver) a review one. As a poet she was (I thought) over fond of the unrhymed iambic pentameter. She edited a book of dirty verse and prose which was (again I thought) not as good as mine. 3. I met Roger Woddis (another doughty comp winner) in a London bookshop, a dissatisfied man. Perhaps it was his failure to make it with the TLS crowd. Perhaps it was just his politics.
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