In Competition No. 3175 you were invited to submit a prequel to a well-known poem.
C. Paul Evans’s opening to a prequel to the nation’s favourite poem caught my eye:
My publishers had telephoned to askFor something inspirational and spiffy:I told them I would think about the task,But mentioned I was feeling somewhat iffy…
As did Bill Greenwell’s Stevie Smith:
Nobody saw him, the dry man, But there he lay frowning: Life was much much harder than he thought, Not-bathing but browning.
Other standout performers, in a stellar entry, were Jayne Osborn, Iain Morley, Chris Ray, Nick MacKinnon, Max Gutmann, Robin Helweg-Larsen, G.N. Crockford and M.F. Shardlow. The winners, led by Alex Steelsmith’s ‘This Be The Prequel’, net £25.
They bring you up, your mum and dad, To honour them, no matter what. You learn that you, not they, are bad, And ought to keep your cakehole shut. And so I did, and all seemed well, Except for ulcers, nervous tics,Depression, allergies from hell And phobias no drug could fix. And then one day a clever shrink Convinced me that I’d spent my youth Repressing what I feared to think, Unconscious of the awful truth. I learned to punch a pillow, vent My rage in vulgar terms and curseThe predecessors I resent. While on the couch, I wrote a verse. Alex Steelsmith (‘This Be The Verse’)
I met a traveller from an antique landWho said — ‘There’s little for a traveller there,Mere ruins and a wilderness of sand,Fragments of statues, scattered everywhereLike broken toys by giants roughly flung,As if impatient with their desert state,Among the pye-dogs and the camel dung,Long outworn as the names they celebrate.Such abject remnants, mired in dust and grime,Can never stir the spirit or evinceFancies that seek a higher form in rhyme,Dead as they are, uncounted centuries since.’So
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in