Speccie Competition Paracrotic
Competition: Paracrostic
LUCY VICKERY
SATURDAY, 3RD DECEMBER 2011
In Competition No. 2724 you were invited to supply a poem in which the initial letters of each line read down the page reproduce the last line.
Though some of you clearly relish competitions of this kind (check out Frank McDonald’s double-paracrostic in the winning line-up), there was the inevitable rumble of protest in the ranks. Here’s Jerome Betts: ‘To write a verse within such rules,/ How can this count as fun?/ I think that only drunks or fools/ Suspect it can be done...’ Bill Greenwell agrees: ‘Some competitions/ Expect you to slave/ Nightly. Perdition/ Draws near, as, unshaved,/ Manic and glum,/ Expecting to die,/ Folly fills bumf./ It’s like working out pi.’
Discontent notwithstanding, you rose to the challenge with gusto. Commendations to Neil MacKinnon, Alan Birglar, John Samson, Mary Holtby, Mae Scanlan and D.A Prince. The winners are printed below and get a well deserved £25 each. The bonus fiver belongs to Ray Kelley.
Katherine’s soulful eyes disarm.
Irene has lustrous auburn hair;
Sue, buxom bounce beyond compare;
Stella, a voice of warmth and charm.
Meg is so graceful when she dances.
Abigail’s tinkling laugh endears.
Nell has the shapeliest little ears.
Yvette’s douce elegance entrances.
Wanda’s shared-secret wink beguiles.
Eve’s sphinx-like manner fascinates.
Della’s droll banter captivates.
Anne shows cute dimples when she smiles.
Christine one tends to overlook,
Oblivious of the way Christine
Outshines them all with her cuisine...
Kiss many, wed a cook.
Ray Kelley
Empower me, I pray,
Nourish now my art.
Lacking words today
I don’t know where to start
Gloom benumbs my brain,
Hope dwindles, terrors grow,
This Paracrostic pain
Envelops me in woe.
Nonplussed I struggle on
Mindful of the clock
Embroiled and woebegone,
Oppressed by writers’ block;
Must I at last give in
Unnoticed, doomed to lose,
See all my rivals win?
Enlighten me, O Muse!
Alan Millard
Winter’s with us noW,
It’s time to skate and skI,
Nature wears a frowN,
Trees have lost espriT.
Everywhere we seE
Rain clouds threaten waR;
Season of grief and losS,
Weary as books of laW.
Is there hope? Can I
Trust Christmas’s debuT?
Happy, hopeful faitH
Unction for me and yoU?
Sadly no bons motS
Nudge me to festive fuN.
Old age is here and O,
Winter’s with us noW.
Frank McDonald
Watchfully he served his master,
Helping him prevent
Alcohol-induced disasters
Turning truculent,
Telling nothing of his follies —
Happenings with ‘sweet’
Ever-smiling rubber dollies,
Bouncy and discreet.
Underneath it all he suffered
Til he saw his chance.
Literary work he offered
Earned him an advance.
Readers now devour that sorry
Slate of sins and flaws
All uncovered in his story:
What the butler saw.
J. Garth Taylor
Where have all the poets gone?
Hopkins, Shakespeare, Keats?
Only fools believe it’s fun
Reading Blake or Yeats.
Elegies as made by Gray
Are mocked by those who know,
Donne is scarcely scanned today,
Shelley is de trop.
Pope who liked to criticise
Others bards is banished,
Even Burns abandoned lies,
Tennyson has vanished.
Silence shrouds these gods of old,
None to them must bow.
Only modern verse is gold.
Who reads poets now?
Max Ross
My pen’s no sword, I must accord,
Yet, comic verse or tragic,
Performs its task — that’s all I ask —
And now, as if by magic,
Rolls out the letters, knows no fetters,
Adds each shining word,
Constructs the verse, though trite — or, worse,
Regrettably absurd —
Or leaps ahead, to write instead
Some sketches for the ending;
Then back again to this quatrain
In search of words still pending.
‘Come on!’ I cry. My pen and I,
Governed by British phlegm,
End with a modest period
My paracrostic gem.
Brian Allgar
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