Lucy Vickery

A poem for Boris

issue 04 November 2017

In Competition No. 3022 you were invited to compose a safe poem that Boris Johnson could have on hand to quote from when out in the field.

The recent kerfuffle caused by the Foreign Secretary’s murmured quotation of a few lines of Kipling’s poem ‘Mandalay’ during a visit to Shwedagon Pagoda in Myanmar led me to wonder whether it might be wise, given the ever-increasing number of no-go areas when it comes to subject matter, to challenge you to fashion an all-purpose poem unlikely to offend.

Barbara Jones’s Blakean-flavoured entry...

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