In Competition No. 2449 you were invited to provide an Alice in Wonderland-style conversation between two chess pieces, either in prose or in verse.
Le beau valet de coeur et la dame de pique
Causent sinistrement de leurs amours défunts.
It was this wonderful image of Baudelaire’s that suggested to me the notion of a conversation between chess pieces. Among those of you who gave your entries a contemporary slant, I particularly enjoyed Tim Raikes’s lines:
‘But is that a man by the shrubs I can see
Haranguing a blooming camellia tree?’
‘Now that…,’ said the Queen as she fingered her ring,
‘That is my son, and he wants to be King.’
The prizewinners, printed below, get £30 each, and the bonus fiver is John Whitworth’s.
‘Mark my words and mind your manners,’ said the Bishop to the Pawn,
As he quizzed the little fellow with a proper priestly scorn,
‘Or you’ll wish, let me assure you, that you never had been born.’
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