[Chris O'Carroll]

No 4286
Set by Leonora Casement
We asked for a poem in the style of Gerard Manley Hopkins about any story in the news over this summer.

This week’s winners
Excellent effort all round. There were some very moving entries but although we were sent a large number on the birth of Prince George, we felt they were on the whole a little bit saccharine for Mr Hopkins. We particularly liked Peter Goulding’s entry (“And the charred air bore our creosote cries,/Wafting with willowy gaiety as a green God did,/Eclipsing Eden; fine, fickle fruit we pummelled and prodded/For we were brown and burnt and worldly wise”) and Sylvia Fairley’s (“Death-spiral, drilling, oozing oil,/Purposed to take, make, break this spell;/A whitefilled wildness, seared, smeared with toil”). Hon menshes to you two. Then there was G M Davis’s “Glory Be to Pom for Nippled Things” (“Pliant lapping tongues that linger on pale pink puckered rings;/Slick, dew-damp dildoes; glossy knickers strewn/Wild-wantonly on bedroom floors; warm vulvae whisker-free”). We won’t forget those images in a hurry. The winners get £25 each, with the Tesco vouchers going, in addition, to Bill Greenwell.

The Weather-Mood
This summer hovered hawk-like in the air,
Aloof-aloft, then swooping wild too near
Beat on our brows with wings rapt close about
Of heat till drawing off; long rainfalls, drought and doubt,
Whose rumour and report preyed on our minds –
Rapscallion of seasons, predator of peace!
Surpriser of our Expectations: pounce-upon
Of mice those are, those little fretful things
That scurry (our breasts as their fields) beneath a sun
Or rain they cannot order nor with wit foretell.
Yet Wimbledon seemed to go off quite well,
And England smiles that Murray (a Scot) won.
Graham King

Julying in Jubilo
Wheels slow down now; now, spokes spick, a corona
Wild-whirls above my victor’s valiant podium
As heart, soft, hard, harder even than rhodium
Rages within Froome’s flesh, no gallanter loner.

What bibshorts, what jersey, what helmet, what skill of sonar
And thigh-pump-high, far from Armstrong-odium;
Ah! my cyclist, so sweat-sweet, so low in sodium,
Yet sprinting home, and fast-fellow-yellow, its owner!

And the crowd loud, raw-handed as, perfectly-pedalling,
Frames flash, clash, dash,swarm in formation;
Feel his feet, how they’re fleet, how the English abed’ll sing
Hymns, psalms, a very merry peroration –
Not Scots, not at tennis, but greater gold-medalling
And but a knighthood in sight, inspiring the nation!
Bill Greenwell

The Coming of George
Gravid she was, God’s glorious gift.
In sunstruck sizzling summer streets
Crowd-pressing, persistent masses clamour, lift
Waiting watchful eyes, and warm heartbeats
Call welcome Will and Kate’s sweet swift
Swaddled offering. Boy-babe, precious prince completes
A royal dynasty. Bells boom bunting banners drift
Of now done darkness deep despair defeats.
Helen Hogan

Rock-Crack Draws Shale
My heaviest heart’s shale is racked, hack-blasted all, all failed, foiled and spoiled, oil-wasted –
my precious all-plumbed Balcombe’s dying dearth –
my seismic – oh sunk – Balcombe dear
all seized, fouled and fissured and mere.

What grit and grist of groundwater wells wasted?
What purest peer have wellbores wounded?
Cuadrilla’s will, wonted to wrack – ah, woeful –
a world friend, a spring’s bow and bend,
what quakes will rake, will take and end it?

Protesters poor and drear, dear in durance
stand hard ground in round pens yet delay, delay, delay
drills, the ills of Cuadrilla – is war caged or waged then?
When rocks fracture, earth’s groins groan, cracks
startle slather of slurry – alack! – through hurrying crusts.
Josh Ekroy