A big Sphere presence once again (hardly a surprise, eh?
). Many congratulations to Rob and Alison for their winning entries, and also to Chris, Bazza and Brian for Hon Menshes.
Jayne
(Next comp for a poem called ‘Life on Mars’ on new thread)
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxThe Oldie Competition
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxby Tessa Castro
In Competition no 176 you were invited to write a poem with the title ‘Over the hills and far away’. I think that the wistful just outnumbered the jokey.
I very much liked Chris O’Carroll’s piper, who began: ‘I pipe the tune, it pays me bills, / So shut yer gob about them hills.’ In Basil Ransome-Davies’s undiscovered country, ‘The saxophones play erotic riffs, / The air is sweet with the scent of spliffs, / And death light-years away.’ Brian Allgar thought that pipers play ‘A sound that cannot fail to please / When carried faintly on the breeze.’ Phoebe Flood wanted to go again ‘To lands that auks and griffins know / Beyond the haunts of men.’ Paul Evans was one among several who wrote of ‘white satanic mills’, or wind turbines. Fay Dickinson wrote an ironic antiphon in which a nephew patronised his old aunt, who was all along planning to buy him a conveniently distant ‘house in Wales / Over the hills and far away.’
Commiserations to these, and congratulations to those below, each of whom wins £25, with the bonus Chambers Biographical Dictionary going to Tom Parker’s unusual voyage into nonsense.
Over the hills and far away,
In borrigan ells the irmin play
Their curded koy to quell the gray,
Enwombed in wet golgothic clay.
Under the mounds of pounded earth
Mend urgal moans of mankered birth
That muffet the moonlit morrising mirth,
Long famed beside the Mnemony Firth.
Out of the sulcus cracks they rise,
Monochrome faces, blanded eyes,
Smothering irmin koy with lies
And reason gulched in Moccam’s sighs.
Sinking in mud to ponder their prey,
Where winter seeds in silence stay,
Awaiting the bloom of a borrigan day,
Over the hills and far away.
Tom Parker
‘Over the hills and far away…’
The kettle boils for morning tea,
The hours go gently, day by day,
The telly brings the world to me.
My house is warm and comforting,
My family and friends are near.
The church bells ring, the blackbirds sing,
The pub supplies a glass of beer.
What is it, then, that tugs my mind,
And makes my quiet spirit stray?
What is it I expect to find
Over the hills and far away?
Pat Gulliford
Over the hills and far away
I fancy there’s a better life;
A sky that’s blue instead of grey,
A somewhat bigger-titted wife,
An end to all these sodding bills,
A bit more hair, a slimmer waist,
A son who isn’t hooked on pills,
A daughter who is sweet and chaste.
Over the hills and far away
There’s no confusion, lies or war.
It’s one long, carefree holiday
Where all have love and joy galore,
And God makes His existence clear
To thwart the doubting Thomases,
And no one ever has to hear
Nick Clegg make empty promises.
Rob Stuart
There were no hills. The level house roofs drew
their line low on the sky. Red buses went
along streets that might have a slight ascent,
but mostly not. Some afternoons, we’d go
to the flat park.
One day I found a book
on our shelves, with pictures where a child
laughed from a cloud and spoke of valleys wild,
telling a piper to play there. I looked
at the line drawings, stored away the words
in a dream-memory.
Then the war came,
with guns and darkness and the long, slow game
of bombers, searchlights, shrapnel… and yet, birds
sang in the evening and somehow I knew
the Pied Piper still led his magic way
to some far hill where all children would play
forever.
Soon now, I may find it true.
Alison Prince
The Oldie 'Over the hills and far away' comp results
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