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.