Competition | 25 April 2009

In the dog’s dinner that was Competition No. 2592 you were invited to submit a poem entitled ‘The Name’ in which each line either was an anagram of the name of a well-known poet or contained an anagram of the same. There are two winners in the first category; three in the second.
The first version elicited politely expressed howls of protest from some corners — one competitor likened it to the ‘intellectual equivalent of a full body wax’; mark II produced a collective sigh of relief, though some doughty souls, having already struggled through a week of anagram hell, felt compelled to stick with the original brief.
It was acceptable to use either surnames only or the full monty. General congratulations: it was a pig of an assignment. The winners, printed below, get £25 each. Bill Greenwell and Frank McDonald both get an extra fiver, and John Whitworth earns a nod of approval for his bonus acrostic.