Acrostic | 12 March 2015

In Competition No. 2888 you were invited to submit a poem in the style of a well-known poet, the first letters of each line spelling out the poet’s name. I liked Jerome Betts’s follow-up to Oliver Goldsmith’s ‘The Deserted Village’ and Bill Greenwell’s Spenserian stanza in the manner of Wendy Cope — a parody within a parody. Barbara Smoker, Brian Murdoch and S.E.G. Hopkin also stood out in an impressive entry. The winners take £20. Basil Ransome-Davies earns £25.
 

Reading poetry’s a marvel when you’re back be’ind the line
Under shelter, feeling ’uman, where the whizzbangs never whine.
Donne can make you feel religious when you’ve seen the worst of men,
Yeats can write of love and nature and uplift your ’eart again,
And Tennyson can bang the drum for Empire and what’s right,
Radiating Britain’s greatness like a light’ouse in the night.
Damn all those scribblers, though, who fancy soldiering’s a breeze,
Kitted out by Samuel Brothers, with an ’amper on your knees.
It’s no jolly game of cricket, and you lose your sense of fun
Peerin’ out from seas of mud at the machine guns of the Hun,
Lyin’ low in filthy trenches, killin’ rats and feedin’ lice.
It’s the civvie brags of glory while the squaddie pays the price.
No ranker is a plaster saint, but ’e’s the one who’ll give
Glad answers to the rallying-call ‘who dies if England live?’
Basil Ransome-Davies
 
Wouldst write a sonnet in the style of Will?
I’faith, thou couldst have found no better master;
Learn well from one who’s expert with the quill,
Lest inexperience lead thee to disaster.
Study my verse, and ponder long upon it;
Heed rhyme and metre; add, upon a whim,
A little sauciness to spice thy sonnet,
Knowing thy readers love a hint of quim.
Senescent bards there be who favour Petrarch;
Perchance his forms may please some dullard soul
Enjoying but the spoils of a tetrarch.
A quarter-share? Nay, let the prize be whole!
Reserve some fancy for thy final line;
’Ere long, the extra fiver shall be thine.