I'm standing in for John this week, posting the latest Speccie results, as he's away for a few days.
Congrats to Bill, and to Martin, Bob and Brian for Hon Menshes. (Late entry, Brian??? Tut!
)
Jayne
By Lucy Vickery
In Competition No. 2799 you were invited to submit a poem about smells.
Edward Thomas’s wonderfully evocative poem ‘Digging’ inspired this challenge: ‘Today I think/ Only with scents, — scents dead leaves yield,/ And bracken, and wild carrot’s seed,/ And the square mustard field…’
Thanks to Brian Allgar, who submitted an entry that missed the deadline but brightened the judge’s day. Other star performers were Brian Murdoch, Martin Parker — ‘time to turn fetid, malodorous armpits/ to temptingly sensual, sweet-smelling charmpits’ — Robert Schechter, John MacRitchie and D.A. Prince.
The six entries printed below earn their authors £25 each. The extra fiver goes to W.J. Webster.
It’s like a button pressed, the ping
Of pong that brings up from some store
An image of a scene or thing
Too sharply present to ignore.
A whiff of fish can see me back
Beside the Ouse — here now it feels! —
Entrusted with a wriggling sack
That darkens with the slime of eels.
Dog fug and there is old Miss Ayres
Who let me lodge on her first floor:
Deep breath outside then up the stairs
To breathe again behind my door.
Of course rich odours and the subtler scents
Will always captivate, enhance, beguile:
But if you value lasting redolence
Don’t turn your nose up at the rank and vile.
W.J. Webster
In exit lines the poet tells
Of nard and cassia’s balmy smells,
And babbling in the spicy darkness
He sniffs the rural Ena harkness
Or prizes as memory-goader
The dying violet’s lasting odour,
While hyacinth Helen seems to be
A vessel on a perfumed sea.
Long live those literary noses
Provided none of them supposes
That modern man can share the scents
That they so lovingly dispense,
While chemical allure displaces
Those girls with gardens in their faces,
And frankly it’s a trifle hard
To cheer for cassia and nard.
Mary Holtby
Call it a fragrance; call it a scent;
Call it a perfume a Goddess has lent:
This sillage of Venus, this bouquet divine,
Ambrosial nectar, this essence so fine —
What memory prompts that familiar smell?
Not Gucci, nor Prada, nor whiff of Chanel;
Not fragrance of freesia nor odour of rose
It teases: it’s right on the tip of my nose!
Pavlovian, Proustian pong from the past:
You elude when I sense I’ve recalled you at last:
Oh let me return to inhale you anew —
I’m à la recherche de cet parfum perdu!
An aroma from home, a remembrance so real —
I have it! I know it — it’s eau de vanille!
Oh to capture this rapture, to bottle and flog it —
The truth is, my darling, you smell like a yoghurt.
David Silverman
Glory be to God for all we smell —
For blossom’s balm born on a springtime gust;
For oven-odours — crusty, fresh-baked bread;
Synthetic scented sweetness — Brut, Chanel
And all such fragrances; the mouldy must
Of clutter cloistered in a garden shed;
For smells unseemly, sordid; scent that sours —
The bitter tang of turgid, treacly tar
New-laid in lanes and lay-bys; burning tyres;
The sweet bouquet of mown lawns after showers;
The rapturous aroma from a lit cigar;
The dank delight of smouldering garden fires;
For all smells — fresh, familiar, pleasant, rare,
Whatever is piquant, pungent (who can tell?)
With ripe, raw; putrid, pure; sweet, savoury;
Smell sings; for odours foul or fair, Praise be!
Alan Millard
The musty, musky stench of hay,
The spicy stink of bark:
We went to country fields to play —
It was a family lark.
My Dad inhaled in manly style,
His voice a booming bell.
‘And this,’ he told us with a smile,
‘Is proper country smell.’
By this he meant the whiff of dung,
All sulphurous and rich,
The gas of flatulence, unsung,
That filled each dale and ditch.
The tarry scents of soot or oil
(As after our homeward ride)
Would soothe me. And I still recoil
From the methane countryside.
Bill Greenwell
What is this life if, sad to tell,
We find we’ve lost our sense of smell?
No windblown air from salty seas
Or peaty moorland’s heather breeze.
No whiff of bonfires’ smoky trail,
No fresh ground coffee to inhale;
No waft of things we love to eat
Like bacon sizzling on the heat,
Hot curries, spicily expressed,
Wild strawberries and lemon zest;
No lilac, lavender or rose
To tempt the least receptive nose.,
No joyful satisfaction in
The sweetness of a baby’s skin.
A poor life if it comes to pass
That we can’t smell escaping gas.
Alanna Blake
Speccie Olfactory results
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