[Jayne Osborn]

Well, is this a first,... or what? Four ladies as winners, and no Spherians with even so much as an Honourable Mensh!
Tessa says, "I missed some regular entrants" -- but I'm sure some of our regulars had decent offerings for this one...
Oh well, let's hope we fare better with 'Fruitcake' (see new thread for details).

Jayne

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxThe Oldie Competition
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxby Tessa Castro


In Competition no 180 you were invited to write a poem beginning: ‘It was an Ancient Mariner / Who went to Innisfree.’ On the whole, Coleridge’s insistent ballad metre won out over Yeats.
Your poor old Ancient Mariners seldom got much further than the buzzy lake isle, what with bees and pesky albatrosses. Iris Bull’s admitted at the end: ‘I’ve made a great mistake, / A sadder and a wiser man / I leave this Isle and Lake.’
Peter Davies’s Mariner looked forward to more cheerful prospects: ‘I’ll listen to the cricket sing,/ I’ll exorcise the Curse, / I’ll get away from Coleridge / And his annoying verse.’ But could he?
Chris Kelland’s Mariner was actually shot by a crossbow-wielding Albatross, like some creature in a mediaeval manuscript margin. That was nothing compared with the fate that Johannes Kerkhoven’s Mariner could expect; I can hardly recount it in a magazine for a mixed readership. Michael Bicknell adopted a literal approach to Yeats’s original and pictured the hive inhabited by a sole honey-bee, which soon began to cohabit with another, with jokey if strained consequences.
I missed some regular entrants, who were either away on their own lake isles or were the victims of thunder in the internet. But commiserations to those mentioned and congratulations to those printed below, each of whom wins £25, with the bonus prize of a Chambers Biographical Dictionary going to Elizabeth Brassington.

It was an ancient mariner
Who went to Innisfree.
A retirement home he bought there
And a forty inch TV.
And runner beans he grew there
Until a hosepipe ban
Put paid to all his efforts,
So he made another plan.
A rowing-boat he bought then
And posted his intention
Of running trips for tourists
Just to supplement his pension.
Then, as he rowed, tall tales he told
And scarcely paused for breath,
But the little venture ended
For he bored them all to death.
Elizabeth Brassington

It was an Ancient Mariner
Who went to Innisfree
To try his hand at growing beans –
Then found he missed the sea.

The lake had its attractions
Though he thought it rather tame
And, as for clay and wattles,
What were they, in Heaven’s name?

The peace and quiet wasn’t all
It was cracked up to be:
Those honey-bees, for instance,
Made a right cacophony.

And, though he never had a drop
To drink, it made him cross
That, when he least expected it,
He’d see an albatross.
Karen Pailing

It was an ancient mariner
Who went to Innisfree,
And nobody knew he was there
Till the vicar came for tea.

‘Now where have I seen that skinny hand,
That glittering eye?’ said he.
‘Was it sailing to Byzantium
Or stuck in a silent sea?

‘If I told you half that sailor told
Of the high seas’ wizardry
The nectar made in the bee-loud glade
Would curdle in empathy.

A sailor’s yarn is a sailor’s yarn –
You may tell or let it be.
Who gives a toss for your albatross
While there’s honey still for tea?’
Patricia Hann

It was an Ancient Mariner
Who went to Innisfree
He counted all the bean rows:
They totalled three times three.

Then looking for some peace there
He wandered down a glade
And saw a cabin and a hive
That old man Yeats had made.

The bees were here, the bees were there
The bees were all around.
A gaunt and ghostly albatross
Looked on without a sound.

He heard lake water lapping near
And fell upon his knees,
Then reached an unpoetic end:
Being stung to death by bees.
Gillian Ewing