Body talk

In Competition No. 2962 you were invited to supply a poem about a body part of an author of your choosing. This challenge was inspired by the engaging title of a book by John Sutherland: Orwell’s Nose. In 2012 Sutherland permanently lost his sense of smell. Shortly thereafter, he set about rereading the works of George Orwell’s and was struck by how obsessed Orwell was with what things smell like.

The only noses in the entry, Gertrude Stein’s and Anna Akhmatova’s, had to share the limelight with Belloc’s bottom, Byron’s balls, Jane Austen’s breasts and Freud’s penis. In a palmary entry bursting with wit and invention Paul Evans, Christopher Boyle, Ann Drysdale, J.C.H. Mounsey, Robert Schechter and Roger Theobald stood out. The winners take £25 each. D.A. Prince pockets £30.

When he had fears that he would cease to be,
was it some half-heard prompting from his lung —
that Muse of shadowed immortality
which chilled the sunlit freedom of the young?
And when this lung had whispered, and the doubt
was seeded in his fertile, restless brain
did he find breathing more than in-and-out,
requiring more attention, too much strain.