[John Whitworth]

Nice one here that I haven't seen before. So I don't have anything in the can already as it were and will need to put in some work. A Betjeman perhaps?

No. 2813: poetic pitch

If poets hoping to be Laureate had been required to apply in verse for the position, we would have an interesting archive of poems. You are invited to provide examples of the poetic pitches that might have been made over the years (16 lines maximum). Please email entries, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 28 August.

[Jerome Betts]

I am the very pattern of a modern Poet Laureate,
I can butter up like billy-o, but, in case of need, excoriate . . .

Er . . . JW territory, I think.

[Ann Drysdale]

No, Jerome - stick with it. Once you start singing the damn thing in your head, the earworm will insist on the relentless rhythm. Perhaps a syllable or two de trop in line 2?

But those repeated B's really made me grin. You're on your way to a winner there.

Though stifled into silence by awareness of audacity
I think a poet laureate should demonstrate tenacity...

[John Whitworth]

But Gilbert never was poet laureate. You mean this would be an unsuccessful submission.

[Ann Drysdale]

It says "poets hoping to be..." so I assumed it was poets famous enough for pastiche who didn't make the cut. Not all them as hopes, gets, so to speak.

I think if she'd meant only "poets who later became..." she would have said as much.

Open for debate, I suggest, until someone checks with Lucy.

[Jerome Betts]

If poets hoping to be Laureate had been required to apply in verse for the position, we would have an interesting archive of poems. You are invited to provide examples of the poetic pitches that might have been made over the years

I took this as meaning that any poet-candidate is possible, including the actual incumbents right back to the beginning. John fancies the Euston man. Eusden anybody?

Thanks for the encouragement, Ann, but in my case such earworms seem to lack stamina and puff. We'll see.

[John Whitworth]

You two are right and I am wrong. A Gilbert entry would be OK. Remember he didn't think much of Shakespeare

[John Whitworth]

Masefield was fifty-two when he was made Laurate so perhaps stripling is pushing it. But he looked younger.



John Masefield to King George V

Most poets are a long-haired lot
Who scorn the great outdoors.
They generally go to pot
Through laudanum or whores.

I am not witty, wise or sage.
I am not Rudyard Kipling.
I am not dignified with age,
But still a bardic stripling.

Yet what I am I mean to be,
A gentleman and sailor,
Who writes of hunting and the sea.
And has a decent tailor.

Too many poets stink like tramps.
I have a fresh complexion,
And I can get you foreign stamps
To stick in your collection.

[Rob Stuart]

Surely poems for this comp could be 'by' whomever you like. It doesn't specify that the applicant had to be successful.

[John Whitworth]

You are right. I am working on a submission from Sandy Wilson.