[John Whitworth]

We were evrywhere. Bazza up the top with the extra fiver, Bill down the bottom with the world's smallest country, Martin Parker in the middle and even my good self (my fist success for six months and Thank you Brian Allgar for correcting my Franglais. Congratulations to Migel Mace and RobStuart who were crowded out at the finish.

Lucy Vickery 6 April 2013
In Competition No. 2791 you were invited to provide a poem in praise of a country other than the United Kingdom.

Thanks to John Whitworth, who suggested the topic. It generated a wave of love-thy-neighbourliness, albeit with an undercurrent of mischief, that is a welcome antidote to the prevailing mood of xenophobia.

I liked Ray Kelley’s hymn to Australia — ‘Oz, Oz, glorious Oz,/ Got-the-lot country if ever there was!’ — and was equally impressed by Nigel Mace, Rob Stuart and Charles Curran. The winners, below, earn £25. Basil Ransome-Davies takes £30.

Michael Myers Leslie Nielsen
Gotta love ’em, haven’t you?
Raymond Burr and Leonard Cohen
David Cronenberg woo-hoo.
Céline Dion Joni Mitchell
Donald Sutherland Lorne Green
Not forgetting Mary Pickford
Icons of the silver screen
Also Fay Wray and Jim Carrey
Gorgeous Susan Sarandon
(Cut some slack for William Shatner)
KD Lang …I could go on.
Raise the sound of jubilation.
Spread the word from here to Mars.
Hail a procreative nation —
Canada, the womb of stars!
Basil Ransome-Davies

Let’s wonder at but set aside
The symphonies and lieder:
Their qualities can’t be denied
And need no special pleader.
But when we view a later date,
The twentieth-century story,
What cause is there to celebrate,
What earthly claim to glory?
Yet by the century’s end there rose
From hells of self-sown fire
A settled state that thrives and grows,
No longer a pariah.
To overcome the Nazi shame
And unify the nation,
Deutschland demands ungrudged acclaim
For peaceful re-creation.
W.J. Webster

Across La Manche, sud-ouest de Thanet,
The finest country on the planet,
(Not counting here of course), la France,
Compound de cuisine et romance,

La France, le plus beau pays du monde,
Une nation witty yet profonde.
Tous les enfants can quote Descartes
Which shows how ils sont toujours smart.

Très cultivés, leurs films et plays
Deserving of the highest praise,
Likewise leurs romans need no boost,
Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, Proust,

Les jolies femmes, quel sex-appeal!
Les hommes, quel confidence et style!
Ils even jouent le criquet, yes!
Although (hélas!) sans much success.
John Whitworth

I write of reason’s hinterland, the land each
dreamer knows
And where I now feel most at home — it’s where
the Bong Tree grows.
Where all one’s goods can be contained in just a
five pound note,
And all its new arrivals fit in one small pea-green
boat:
Where politicians don’t exist and banks don’t
make a killing,
Where no one cares that GDP amounts to just one
shilling:
Where sandy beaches have no oil, no screaming
kids or bars
And songs are backed by nothing more than small
non-amped guitars:
Where cats and owls dance hand in hand replete
on quince and honey —
And those who write this kind of verse can all earn
steady money.
Martin Parker

Unmountainous and unRomantic,
no Baroque heavings, nothing frantic,
a less flat cousin to the Dutch,
rude like the French (though not as much),
Belgium — Walloon and Flemish mix,
Byzantine party-politics —
this mini-paean is for you,
tax-saviour of Depardieu.

Beyond where Brel shaped chansons, and
Breughel’s stout peasants trod the land,
or Art Nouveau and Tintin flourished,
or surreal swings of fancy nourished
the wild imaginings of Magritte,
or cooks pair mussels with les frites,
your greatest national treasure’s here:
over one thousand types of beer.
D.A. Prince

You have no army, weather’s balmy,
No one picks a quarrel —
Tuvalu, we long for you,
Your blue lagoons and coral.

Political parties? Quite unknown.
Your PM’s independent —
You have our Queen upon your throne,
Her governor attendant.

A pacific and Pacific style’s
Your pleasure, free from grief:
All smiles across nine tiny isles,
With their atolls, and their reef.

Your highest point is fifteen feet,
Ten thou’s your population —
Who couldn’t call you small and sweet?
You are my favourite nation.
Bill Greenwell