Lucy Vickery

Buttoned up or open neck?

issue 19 October 2013

In Competition 2819 you were invited to write a poem either in free verse mocking rhymed, metrical verse or in conventional verse mocking free verse.
 
Auden was no fan of vers libre: ‘If one plays a game, one needs rules, otherwise there is no fun.’ (D.H. Lawrence, he felt, was one of the few poets who could pull free verse off.) But there are those who question the designation ‘free’. The poet and critic Yvor Winters maintained that ‘the free verse that is really verse, the best, that is, of …Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, and Ezra Pound is the antithesis of free.’ And T.S. Eliot agreed with him. Last time this comp was run, the jury was split. This time round most of you came down on Auden’s side. The winners take £25 each; Alan Millard nabs £30.

Pace you who, scorning rules and reason,
Write rambling lines which neither scan nor rhyme.

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