Speccie Competition This be the Reverse
In Competition No. 2730 you were invited to supply a refutation in verse of Philip Larkin’s assertion ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad’.
‘This Be The Verse’ may not be Larkin’s finest poem but it is certainly his best-known and most oft-quoted (he himself wryly commented that he fully expected to hear it recited by a thousand Girl Guides before he died). The challenge generated a large and generally impressive postbag. Commendations to Frank Osen, Adrian Fry, Robert Schechter and John Whitworth.
Star of the show is Alan Millard, who pockets the extra fiver. His fellow winners, printed below, are rewarded with £25 each.
You lying toad! Your love of booze
Together with that verse’s fame
Lets kids, with words we’d never choose,
Dump on us parents all the blame.
We tuck them up when dark descends
And buck them up through daylight hours
And, later, tolerate their friends
Whose alien ways are not like ours.
But kids, like youngsters all, in turn,
Will one day wear old hats and coats
And, sadly, find there’s more to learn
When they’ve dispersed their wild oats.
This be my verse, and this the truth,
As one discovers if one delves:
Youth hands on misery to youth
By blaming parents, not themselves.
Alan Millard
Come off it, Phil! You’re glad enough
To take the perks of how you are.
It animates your verse, that stuff —
The unhealed wound beneath the scar.
Un-fucked-up, my God, you’d be
A Sunday poet, knitting rhymes —
Husband, father, Dockery,
Not the skewer of our times.
Your being, shall we say, cross-wired
Has gained you more than all your skill:
It’s meant much writing’s been ‘required’
And given you an Hon D, Phil.
Far better thank your Mum and Dad
For what they did, or didn’t do:
What they passed on can’t be so bad
If what you’ve got lives after you.
W.J. Webster
They’ve given you, your Mum and Dad,
The bringing-up that breeds success,
You’re pretty lucky that you’ve had
A childhood of unhappiness.
They leave you often on your own,
Forget to feed you, lock you out,
And now you’re finding as you’ve grown
Self-pity’s not what life’s about.
You learn a technique that survives
When they withdraw their love and care.
Your peers may lead soft pampered lives —
You take the risks they’d never dare.
Remember, when you’re old enough
And on the way to making good,
Have lots of kids and treat them rough,
They’ll grow up just the way they should.
Alanna Blake
Look at it this way: from the day we breathed
We were all blobs of evil, unredeemed.
That’s what the fathers of the church bequeathed,
However innocent we may have seemed.
We also know that, as we took that breath,
We planned a sexual union with our mums,
Devising for our dads an early death.
All this was mapped out by our Viennese chums.
Despite this start, our parents had to cope,
But turned us out house-trained as best they could.
Sometimes they might produce a misanthrope
Or xenophobe, but often something good,
For from this random process might appear
Someone with, say, a gift for verse.
Give them a break, then: nothing’s perfect here.
For you, it could have been a good deal worse.
Noel Petty
You mucked us up, you lame-brained brat,
undoing all the good we did.
Now we bemoan what we begat —
a crude and rude, ungrateful kid.
You’re sulky, surly, loud, uncouth
and smelly but you think you’re cool;
your hideously misspent youth
spent skipping school and playing pool.
Your navel’s pierced, your tongue and nose;
you’re bumptious, boorish, crass and brash.
How dare you even presuppose
that we’ll supply the cash for hash?
You mucked us up, you foul-mouthed lout.
Instead of tender, loving care,
we should have given you a clout
but PC ruled. We did not dare.
Rosemary Fisher
No, on the contrary my lads;
I learnt a lot from my three dads.
The first gave me a gift I prize.
He left me hypersensitised
to cruelty and worth. I see
right through façades — great legacy.
Stepfather number one, moreover,
was only nice when he was sober
which wasn’t often. This leads me
to Mother’s husband number three.
Cirrhotic death made way for him.
A fawning doormat type was Jim.
All three then in their different ways
were educational. I praise
my mother’s gross ineptitude
at choosing men with gratitude.
Dorothy Pope
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