In Competition No. 2593 you were invited to submit a Dear John letter in the style of a poet or author of your choice.
These days, dispatching a loved one generally involves texting ‘u r dumped’ or ‘i h8 u’ and pressing send. This comp was prompted by a longing for a return to the time when giving the heave-ho was a protracted business; when jilters sat hunched over a blank sheet of paper for hours on end, agonising over the right choice of words.
You were out in force this week, both veterans and newcomers. Verse outnumbered prose by a long way. Robert Burns and Elizabeth Barrett Browning featured strongly, while Joan Hunter Dunn was consigned to the scrapheap with great panache by Katie Mallett and G.M. Davis.
In a strong field, Brian Murdoch, Frank Osen, George Simmers, R.S. Gwynn, Mary Holtby and D.A. Prince stood out. The winners, printed below, get £25 each, except G. McIlraith, who pockets £30.
Dear marvellous, complaisant Mary,
I wish you’d been a wee bit chary
An’ sensed my love for you might vary
To weak from strong.
’Tis pity you were so unwary
An’ judged me wrong.
How willingly you gave to me
Your eager, sweet virginity,
Beneath yon shady hawthorn tree
By bonnie Doon.
I’ll no’ forget your ardent glee.
Well, not that soon.
I toast our love, my sonsie lass,
In one more dram.
There’s lads in plenty: first I’ll pass
You on to Tam.
G. McIlraith/Robert Burns
When I consider how I wrote each play
You ever claimed as yours, you worthless
blighter,
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth I say
It is to love a thankless, third-rate writer.
Know this, my self-styled Bard, you sore abuse
The one you know is author of your work,
The one whose name you will not let me use.
You cheating, ingrate, balding, little berk!
No more I’ll grasp your withered, blunted quill
And shape love’s torrid lines upon your bed,
Nor strive to grind out other lines that will
Be claimed to be your copyright instead.
By this Dark Lady you are now forsaken.
I’m off, — to write for cash and Francis Bacon.
Martin Parker/Shakespeare
I, being born a woman and oppressed
By endless preparation of huge meals
Am forced to heave this shopping cart on wheels
That contradict my will as though possessed.
I bear this load to stimulate your zest
For amorous adventures; shopping steals
My energy for better things. It feels
As if I have to pass your mother’s test.
Don’t think that I can be a cook and whore.
One or the other is your option here.
I doubt that when you ask the cook for more
The whore will be dessert for you my dear.
I find your gluttony a frightful bore
The parting of our ways is very near.
Janet Kenny/Edna St Vincent Millay
Why do I leave you? Let me list the ways
You rile me. There’s your snoring, every night,
Your double dealing when I’m out of sight,
Your bulging belly and your stubbly face.
I leave you to your golf on Saturdays,
Illicit sex — your flirting came to light!
I leave you freely; you’ll put up no fight.
I’ll take the dog and leave you, in some place,
Instructions for machines you’ll need to use.
You’ll cope, though you betrayed my simple faith.
I loved you, but that love I seemed to lose
With loss of trust, — I loved you with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, here I choose
To walk my path alone from now till death.
Shirley Curran/Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Dear John,
A difficult letter to write, this, don’t you know. Reminds me of scribbling my first betting slip. Perhaps best to get in medias res straight away? Our common interest in the turf brought us together, but into each sporting life a little rain must fall, otherwise the going would always be on the firm side.
Our engagement has been on and off more frequently than a jockey’s silks, but I am now scratching your name from the racecard, all bets on our entering the winners’ enclosure together and getting hitched are off, and stake money is being returned. I shall always treasure those special meetings: lingering at Lingfield, canoodling at Carlisle and that weekend at Wetherby. Maybe we came out of the starting stalls too quickly and didn’t get the distance? Whatever, I’m afraid the odds on changing my mind are about 500 to one.
Sincerely, Jane
Derek Morgan/P.G. Wodehouse
What thorn in this thistle-epistle, such better-
begone-
bitterest tidings! But my fell elbow nudging thine,
And my tip-tongue tasting the lees of our love’s
last wine
Furred and curdling, how they no longer linger
upon
Our ruder canoodling — though I wince, once-
genuine John,
As a shivering river that ah! hath no depth, nor
design:
Most likely you shall go your way, I shall go mine,
As an unborn bard may sing, carol-careless, a
wan swan!
Love’s floribunda moribund, and its sweets swart,
Its mettle unmetalled, its surface unpolished,
unlinished —
Raff-rough, what a half-husk, how turnèd ’tis to
naught.
Where once grew new, and newer shoots, is
diminished,
Very unmerry, berry-bare, AND rootless, petal-
short,
For another brother, so dear, we are finished,
finished.
Bill Greenwell/Gerard Manley Hopkins
No. 2596: A is for Asbo
You are invited to submit an alphabet primer (a is for…, b is for…, etc) designed for children of the Noughties (150 words maximum). Entries to ‘Competition 2596’ by 14 May or email lucy@spectator.co.uk.
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