In Competition No. 2458 you were invited to disprove Chesterton’s assertion that ‘poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese’. I meant disprove by your own efforts, not disprove historically, but either approach was acceptable. Belloc waxed lyrical on the subject in an essay, ‘In Praise of Cheese’, and the American writer Clifton Fadiman happily described it as ‘milk’s leap towards immortality’, but it was left to you to represent the poets. Among your recommendations were some strangers to me: Havarti, Geitost, Caboc (a double-cream cheese wrapped in oatmeal) and, most romantic, ‘the truckle from Appledore’. Commendations to Doris Davies. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus fiver goes to William Danes-Volkov.
Dreaming of cheese
And covered with fleas
Life had been hard on Ben Gunn.
Had his dreams been of chips
And his parasites thrips
He might have had some kind of fun.
But cheese as nutrition
Inspires a condition
Of loneliness when there is none.
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