[John Whitworth]

Well done, Chris O'Carroll. Actually doubly well done as Chris is also A.G. Atkinson. What a man! Bad luck George Simmers, Rob Stuart, Adrian Fry, Robert Schechter.

Lucy Vickery 15 June 2013
In Competition 2801 you were invited to rewrite, in pompous and prolix style, any well-known simple poem.

Space is on the tight side so, pausing only to congratulate and commiserate with the longer-than-usual list of those who narrowly missed out — Mae Scanlan, Mary Holtby, Nigel Stuart, George Simmers, Rob Stuart, Ray Kelley, Adrian Fry (‘Jack Sprat possessed a remarkable antipathy to the consumption of adipose matter’) and Robert Schechter (‘This Be Not Standard Metrical Prosody’), take a bow — it’s over to the stellar prizewinners below, who earn £25 each.

Chris O’Carroll takes £30 for his elaboration on Ogden Nash’s four-line reflection on the best tool for ice-breaking (‘Candy is dandy…’).


Confections clad in chocolate (dark or milk),
A-shimmer with the glossy sheen of silk
Around some creamy, crisp or chewy filling,
Are treats with which to win treats still more thrilling.
Nestled in niches in a gilt-trimmed box
They woo seductively. Candy unlocks
The heart and loins to which your own aspire.
Its flavours are prime fuel for carnal fire.

But beverages born of distillation
Are finer sovereign aids to copulation.
The merest modicum of rum or gin
Conduces to the mood you want her in,
While little more than a soupçon of whiskey
Suffices as a dose to get her frisky.
When one’s objective is to be embraced,
Sweets for finesse, John Barleycorn for haste.
Chris O’Carroll

A sad lament in poesy I tender,
A melancholy song in sorrow sung
Of one, an infant, feminine by gender,
Upon whose brow, betwixt her eyebrows, hung
A forelock drooping like a question mark
Inverted — upside down; and juxtaposed,
As pleasure is to pain, or light to dark,
So were her ways— one moment in the throes
Of disobedience beyond the ken
Of human comprehension, like some wild,
Unmanageable animal — and then
Reversion to behaviour meek and mild;
Thus can vicissitude confuse and vex
The soul should vice and virtue intertwine,
As when an infant of the fairer sex
Acts dual parts — now devilish, now divine.
Alan Millard

No bovine did I ever once perceive
Whose hide partook of an imperial hue
Which artists on their palettes oft achieve
By combinations of red paint with blue.
Nor is that vision one for which I yearn.
Such novelty for me would have no charm.
Well would it suit me never to discern
Grape-tinted stock on any cattle farm.

Yet, if I learned my sole means to prevent a
Glimpse of a taurine creature in the range
Of tones encompassing lilac, magenta,
Violet, mauve et al. would be to change
My species and my colour so that I
Became what I don’t care to look on, then,
Judging to be were worse than to descry,
I’d choose to let one swim into my ken.
A.G. Atkinson

Perhaps the Lord with hypostatic tread
Perambulated pastures, England’s own.
And was His Messianic message spread
Among those mountains Anglians have known?

Refulgently did Agnus Dei glance
Upon our peaks with beatific mien?
And was His Holy Citadel, perchance,
Founded in Albion’s inauspicious scene?

Accord me first my arcus aureate
With sagittal attachments of desire,
Then hastate hope, that I may operate
My curricle of chaste celestial fire.

Cerebral strife I shall refuse to stem
Nor will I lower valour’s gladius
Till I have built a new Jerusalem
In English meadows finely verdurous.
Frank McDonald

Sing of a coin of low denomination
And seeds to give one grain post-germination;
Two dozen birds (genus: turdus merula)
Were oven baked— could anything be crueller?
The crust being pierced, ’tis wondrous to relate,
Melodious avian sounds did emanate!
What other preparation could enable
A worthier dish to grace the royal table?
The King sat in his Treasury out of view,
Conducting a portfolio review;
The salon served a tea for his dear wife,
Of apian bounty and the staff of life;
Outside a servant to her Royal Highness
Suspended garments to enhance their dryness;
Turdus merula swooped sans hesitation,
Subjecting her to nasal amputation.
Roger Theobald

O astral body, stelliform, sidereal,
Effulgent, coruscating, incandescent,
Relucent, scintillating, iridescent,
Yet tiny, seeming almost immaterial,

I speculate as to your composition:
A constant thermonuclear reaction
Of plasma bound by gravity’s attraction
Until destroyed by entropy’s attrition.

How high above our world is your abode!
The light that reaches us is conical,
The distance truly astronomical
To travel down that vast galactic road.

By what dark forces is your radiance bent
Before we wish upon you with such hope?
A metastable carbon allotrope
That glitters brightly in the firmament.
Nicholas Holbrook