Competition | 7 November 2009

In Competition No. 2620 you were invited to submit an argument, in verse, for the superiority of one vegetable over another. It was Pablo Neruda’s ‘Ode to the artichoke’ that got me thinking about the pecking order in the vegetable kingdom. Here’s a snippet: ‘The cabbage/ Dedicated itself/ To trying on skirts,/ The oregano/ To perfuming the world,/ And the sweet/ Artichoke/ There in the garden,/ Dressed like a warrior,/ Burnished/ Like a proud/ Pomegranate…’ In a bumper crop of entries Martin Parker impressed, as did Frank Osen, David Mackie, Ray Kelley, Robert Schechter and Juliet Walker. In fact, you were all on sparkling form. But there’s room for only six winners, who are rewarded with £25 each. W.J Webster gets £30.

As for my pantheon of veg, the sprout
Is in, the artichoke as surely out.
(No, not the so-called ‘globe’, whose leaves you pluck
To give you something minuscule to suck:
Jerusalem’s the name my bête grise bears —
A golden guise to mask its grubby wares.