In Competition No. 2737 you were invited to submit a double dactyl.
This popular and, judging by the size of the entry, extraordinarily compulsive poetic parlour game was invented in the Sixties by the celebrated poets Anthony Hecht and John Hollander and is described in the blurb of Jiggery-Pokery, their magnificent compendium of the form, as a ‘devilish amalgam of rhyme, meter, name-dropping and pure nonsense’.
The challenge generated a quirky parade of double-dactylic notables. I especially liked Bill Greenwell’s double dactyl as it might have been written by that mangler of meter William McGonagall; commendations, too, to Mike Morrison, Luci Thomas, Christopher Greening, Roger Munson, Alannah Blake and Penelope Mackie.
The winners, printed below, are rewarded with £15 each.
Dimity-dashity
Emily Dickinson
Danced around Death like the
Flame round a wick.
Though she is known for her
Eremiticity
She had a sharpness that
Cut to the quick.
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