[FOsen]

My love is like a red, red nose.
It may seem out-of-place,
But ah, my friends, and oh, my foes,
See how it lights my face.

My love is like a red, red nose,
Less Beckett, though, than Pinter.
My love is like a red, red nose
That warms me through the winter.

My love is like a red, red nose,
Ridiculously stunning,
My love is like red, red nose,
Unbroken and still running.

Frank

[Edmund Conti]

Can you send in more than one?

[FOsen]

I'll try.

Actually, I believe you can. I seem to recall Chris or John saying he sometimes sends multiple poems with a list of possible noms de plume for Lucy to choose.

[John Whitworth]

Frank, what a splendid poem.

There is an old folk tale that the great God of the competitions, one Martin Fagg, a schoolmaster now dead, once won every prize in a competition with his own name and various noms de plume. Cerainly Maud Gracechurch a doughty winner, was a canal boat owned by another winner, I think E. O. Parrott. And Bill Greenwell is/was Will Bellenger. I have entered as Phoebe Flood, but never won.

I once won the New Statesman Crossword (together with my wife) as Napoleon Bonaparte. My old mind is not up to crosswords any more, but I can still rhyme. Curious that.

Perhaps not. Christopher Smart composed his best poems on the walls of his cell in Bedlam.

[Chris O'Carroll]

Yes, multiple entries are allowed. I've only ever had one multiple win. I sent in both submissions for that week under my own name, and Lucy emailed me to say both entries were winners and to ask for a pseudonym to affix to one of them. Since then, I sign any second, third, etc. submission with my own name plus an alternate. I'm still waiting for another double score. I'd love to believe that Martin Fagg (or Stanley Sharpless, another legendary long-time winner to whom the same feat has been attributed, I think -- or is it E.O. Parrott?) really did take all the prizes one week, but there is a whiff of urban legend about that tale. Still, simply having people imagine that you're capable of such a thing is quite a victory.

[John Whitworth]

Stanley Sharpless, who left school at fifteen, wrote the finest poem ever to have won a prize. It is called something like 'Cocoa, Cupid's Nightcap' and can be found on the web.

[Jerome Betts]

My love is like . . . not Robbie Burns,
That randy rhyming sot,
Though Edinburgh’s where he earns
His massive pension pot.

No ex-Sir Fred, he scents a deal,
But dodges duff Dutch banks,
And Murdoch’s muck-sheets can’t reveal
Bent friends, or drug-fuelled pranks.

Our partnership, rock-solid, rich,
Its bonds by no means junk,
Outshines the RBS, in which
Our taxes have been sunk.

O Caledonia, viewed with bile
For gambling with our pound,
At least along the Royal Mile
One union’s yet sound!

[Roger Slater]

My love is like
a red red rose
with thorns that spike
and tear my nose

and pollen dust
that makes me cough.
I can't adjust.
The wedding's off.

[Martin Parker]

My love is like a tin from Heinz.
She's 57 sorts
of recipes which, she opines,
spice amatory sports.

Her product range, it seems, commands
a wide enough variety
for satisfying Love's demands
for tantric male satiety.

Now old, I find a single kiss
enough for amatory heaven.
But she's proposed a night of bliss
with products one to fifty-seven.

Imagine, if you can, the spot
of bother I'll be in
surviving while she does just what
it says upon the tin.