Competition | 20 June 2009

Lucy Vickery presents the latest competition

In Competition No. 2600 you were invited to submit a poem containing the first or last line ‘Whenever you see a rhinoceros’.

Inspiration for this comp came from Philip.mortimer (who signed himself with an email address only), who sent me a copy of a letter from Richard Jebb to the widowed American intellectual and socialite Carrie Slemmer, whom he later married. In it Jebb describes a dinner at which Robert Browning is a guest: ‘We were talking of English words that had no rhymes, and after instancing: silver, month, depth and false, Mr Browning asked for a rhyme to rhinoceros, which he presently supplied himself as follows: “Whenever you see a rhinoceros,/ If a tree be in sight, /Climb quick, for his might/ Is a match for the gods, he would toss Eros!”’

You rose to the challenge admirably. Worthy of special mention are Juliet Walker, Susan McLean and Katie Mallett.