[John Whitworth]

Well, I think this fulfils the requirements for the revised competition. It also addresses the problem Bill Greenwell mentioned about making the poem fit the title. It has the drawback of being libellous (though I am told you cannot libel the dead) and I particularly regret the calumny on Gavin Ewart, but I am sure his shade will forgive me. If anyone spots that any anagram is wrong, be a dear and point it out.

The Name

Shelley, hell yes, what a rude boy!
Hopkins gets to screw posh kin.
Auden wants to stroke a nude boy
Keats takes sex-crazed lodgers in.

Enright likes one nighter sport.
Shadwell (welsh lad) buggers boylets.
Porter is of bad report.
Eliot (T.S.) lurks in toilets.

Arnold rogers Landor’s daughter.
Rochester thinks her corset hot.
Ewart’s name was writ in water.

Shakespeare’s name was not.

[Jim Hayes]

Thanks for the help and the inspiration John, this is what I'm putting in;

The Name (hate men)

While Seamus Heaney, aha, eyes menu,
Lewis Carroll sees crawlies roll it,
Alfred Lord Byron forlornly badder, knew
it was he and TS Eliot stole it.

I'm sweaty Lily,moaned Willy Yeats, and what
a caloric dump!, Padraic Colum agreed,
Ay, a scrotal twister, said Sir Walter Scott,
we eat rubber bison said Robbie Burns, indeed.

As C.S. Caverly lets calves cry,
Charles Causley casually cheers
letting Sylvia Plath (a vital sylph) buy
dinner, Ogden, a hen’s gonad, Nash, leers.

“Timely vandals!” says Edna St V Millay,
then lechery yelps came from Percy Shelley.
Turn cartwheels Tom asked Charlotte Mews, OK?
When Romeo Moore, cried not on your nelly!

[John Whitworth]

Great stuff Jim, particulary a hen's gonad. But, alas, the woman is Charlotte Mew, so you'll need to fix that.

[Jim Hayes]

Yipes!

Do a cartwheel Tom, begged Charlotte Mew, OK?

Should do it eh? Many thanks John.

BTW I've asked the adorable Lucy ( I can suck up too) which half of the competition Bill Greenwell entered and to put me in the other.

[John Whitworth]

Didn't Bill Greenwell say he was in for the whole nine yards, the difficult bit. But of course he could do one of the others too. You can actually put in additional entries, under your own name or using a pseudonym. Maude Gracechurch, who used to win regularly, was actually a canal barge belonging (I think) to E.O. Parrott who won even more often.

[Marion Shore]

I swore I wouldn't waste time on this.
I'm hopeless.


Emily Dickinson, iced, solemn, inky;
Robert Burns, why are your rubbers torn?
DH Lawrence, darn lech! We find you so kinky!
Dylan Thomas, sadly, a month now you mourn.
TS Eliot--ole Tits! Are you wearing a bra?
Reveillez-vous, Baudelaire! L'aube delira!

....................--Sari Hormone

[R. S. Gwynn]

But what about Hughes? He hugs.

[Bill Greenwell]

Originally Posted by John Whitworth

Maude Gracechurch, who used to win regularly, was actually a canal barge belonging (I think) to E.O. Parrott who won even more often.

You can say that again. He was Maud (sic) Gracechurch, A. Boteman, Wayne Sidesaddle, B. Mooring and a whole host of others. I went on his barge once. It was dominated by a huge projection screen (he was so short-sighted he was registered as blind) so he could see what had been sent him. He also, and I know this not politically correct, but it was comical at the time, mistook Fiona Pitt-Kethley for a hat-stand, and gave her chase for a bit round the local pub.

But the bigger winner was Martin Fagg. It was said that he had once won every entry in a Spectator Comp under five different pseudonyms. I can't remember them all, but he was certainly Molly Fitton and Rufus Stone (a Dorset village), and there were at least twenty of him.

Bill

[John Whitworth]

Thisis all a bit in the English reminiscence mode, but why not. These competitions may be one of our most lasting literary monuments. 1. Was Martin Fagg in fact a Shrewsbury schoolmaster? 2. It's true: Fiona Pitt-Kethley did (does?) look a bit like a hat-stand when you would have thought she'd look like the blowsy version of Diana Dors. She gave me marsala and fruit-cake once and proved to have a very sound classical education. Her house in Hastings had the Pompeii mosaic of the dog with cave canem set into the hall floor. For our transatlantic readers, Fiona Pitt-Kethley, as well as being a competition winner (as was her mother Olive, with whom she lived) enjoyed a certain brief but considerable fame as a priapic poet and quarrelled publicly with the Faber Martian poet, Craig Raine, about whether he had, or had not, actually read any of her poetry collection 'Sky Ray Lolly' before turning it down. I interviewed her for a Sunday newspaper and used to possess her notorious book, but I seem to have lost it. It sold very well, better than any of mine and, I suspect, better than any of Craig's too, but mine was (I stoutly aver) a review one. As a poet she was (I thought) over fond of the unrhymed iambic pentameter. She edited a book of dirty verse and prose which was (again I thought) not as good as mine. 3. I met Roger Woddis (another doughty comp winner) in a London bookshop, a dissatisfied man. Perhaps it was his failure to make it with the TLS crowd. Perhaps it was just his politics.

[Bill Greenwell]

Originally Posted by Jim Hayes

Yipes!

BTW I've asked the adorable Lucy ( I can suck up too) which half of the competition Bill Greenwell entered and to put me in the other.

Are you by any chance suggesting that I haven't entered both halves?!

Nell L. Wregible