[Jayne Osborn]

Our Bazza (aka Iain Colley) has been hiding his light under a bushel, it seems - see below! What can we say? 'Congrats', 'Well done' - nothing quite seems enough. I'll have to settle for 'RESPECT, man!'

Meanwhile, not to take away the glory from John - CONGRATULATIONS!!!
Also to Martin Parker - £150 - nice one, Martin. Very well done.
Here's the report:

CONGRATULATIONS TO IAIN Colley who won this year's Grand Poetry Prize, generously sponsored by the Mail on Sunday, for his poem 'Urban Ghosts', which was printed in July's magazine. He was presented with the award - a cheque for £5,000 - by Dame Eileen Atkins at a lunch on 2 November. This month's poems were on the subject of 'self-portrait'. John Whitworth wins first prize and £300; Martin Parker wins second prize and £150: and the other two printed receive £10 each.
The next subject is 'on the beach'; the deadline 25 January.

First Prize
Self Portrait by John Whitworth
I like to loaf, I like to laugh; I like to read the Telegraph;
I buy it at a cut-price rate, it tells me of affairs of state;
And on that state I meditate: I am a wise old fellow.

I potter in a world of prose; grandchildren tell me how it goes.
They drink and disco at the dub; I soak for hours in the tub,
Careen my carcass, scrub-a-dub: I am a hale old fellow.

I mutter when I do not shout; in welly boots I splash about;
I walk on rainy afternoons; I dine on cauliflower and prunes,
And never mess my pantaloons: I am a clean old fellow.

A television haruspex; I like the violence, hate the sex;
I comb the Oxfam shops for togs; the country's going to the dogs,
I chart it all in monologues: I am a stern old fellow.

The doctor gives me coloured pills to cure me of my various ills,
My smoker's cough, my writer's stoop, my lecher's eye, my
brewer's droop,
My belly like a cantaloupe: I am a sad old fellow.

A world of dew. And yet. And yet a world not easy to forget;
I cannot let it pass me by; I stop and look it in the eye;
And, as you see, I versify: I am a game old fellow.

Second Prize
Self-Portrait by Martin Parker
Six degrees of separation
is no cause for celebration
if your portrait shows too clearly
those you're six degrees form* - nearly.

Surveying now my bath-night buff
sixty would not be enough
to hide my ancestors' appliance
of years of ill-judged misalliance.

For it is all too clear to me
that way back up my family tree
there lurked in Earth's primeval sauna
a very ugly bunch of fauna.

These mis-shaped antecedents fixed
their minds on lust and freely mixed
with all who found 'grotesque' compulsive.
Survival of the most repulsive

was something Darwin did not see.
He got it wrong. It's here. It's me!
And that is why I am emphatic -
my self-portrait's for the attic.

*The magazine says 'form' but it's surely a typo for 'from'. (Not my error, Martin)

The Mandelbrot Set by J R Gillie
Professor Mandelbrot is dead;
Someone is praising him:
'His set describes points in a plane
With fractals at the rim.'

A fractal is a special shape,
With shapes of smaller size
Which in their lesser structure ape
The thing which they comprise.

Just so in Nature every fern
Of leafy fronds is made:
Each large frond by its spears in turn
Is accurately portrayed.

Has natural replication
By smaller things of great
A wider application
To our created state?

He made man in his image:
Self-portraiture by God!
Considering my visage,
That sounds distinctly odd.

Self-portraits by D A Prince
Take Rembrandt, and that cool observant gaze
with which till death he viewed his changing face,
recording youthful hope, fresh dreams; the place
for honesty to test the subtle ways
experience had worn the differing plays
of light and sadness. He drew every trace
of failing dignity, of ageing grace;
all for himself, and not for public praise.

The mirror never lies: no emptiness
or brave deception foils its one design -
to show how flesh records each shabby cause.
Could you confront with equal tenderness
your secret faults and every wrinkled line
that time inscribes to make your image yours?

[Jayne Osborn]

I'm a bit surprised no-one's posted a comment on Bazza's lovely win of 5 grand!
...or John's 300 quid... or Martin's 150 smackers.

They're all spherians who've done extremely well - deservedly. Some plaudits are due.

[Spindleshanks]

I think we're all still assimilating it, Jayne. I mean, five thousand quid!! On present exchange rate, that's about $AUD8000. I would fly to London for that, though probably not on an A380.
Congratulations everyone, though I do think the Petrarchan was worth more than ten quid.

Peter

[Martin Parker]

Am delighted with my own 2nd spot and at John's self-portrait.
But all pales into insignificance besides Bazza's five grand. That is a whole year's salary for our Poet Laureate, I believe. Perhaps now she too may be thinking that she is in the wrong job. What about Bazza for the butt of wine as well as the money?

[Jayne Osborn]

Yes, it's one hell of a lot of money, Peter!
Every month the Literary Review prize money is good, and once a year it's phenomenal...

I do think the Petrarchan was worth more than ten quid.

...but you only win a tenner if you're not a subscriber!

[Jerome Betts]

Jayne, perhaps it's down to shell-shock, or 'there was silence in heaven for about the space of half an hour', or a large number of Thanksgiving hangovers thinning out the trans-Atlantic traffic.

Congratulations and gnashing envy to all three, not forgetting yourself a few months ago. I'm sure Martin's reference to a butt for Bazza was purely in the poet's perquisite sense with no submarine sub-text in the competition-reducing Duke of Clarence one.

This will do wonders for the LitRev's subscription-list!

[Spindleshanks]

Originally Posted by Jerome Betts

This will do wonders for the LitRev's subscription-list!

Not for me, I'm afraid. Too high-brow, too parochial and too costly for an Oz address. In fact, had I been aware of the ten-quid limit on non-subscribers, I wouldn't have bothered with submitting to the current Stalker comp.

[Jayne Osborn]

You sound a bit grumpy, Peter. I hope you win with 'Stalker', even if it means you only get a tenner; I'm sure it would put a big smile on your face

For £28 a year for an online subscription, though, I reckon that's not a bad investment for 12 entries to a prestigious competition offering big money prizes, with the added bonus of a chance to win five thousand pounds at the end of the year! They also bring out anthologies every so often, and a winning poem that's in it gets lots of publicity again.

Anyway, enough of that ... I'm not on their PR payroll!

[basil ransome-davies]

Thanks to all for good wishes.

[basil ransome-davies]

Highbrow? The Literary Review? Are you kidding?