In Competition No. 2890 you were invited to imagine that one of the major newspapers has ceased publication and provide a verse lament for it.
In his 2004 book The Vanishing Newspaper Philip Meyer predicted that the final hard-copy newspaper will plop through someone’s letterbox in 2043. So who’ll be the first to go? Over to you. D.A. Prince pockets £30; her fellow prize-winners earn £25.
No more the morning doorstep thumps that bring
news and opinions from the public sphere.
The Guardian’s laid to rest where angels sing
and deadlines are no more, is grieved for where
the muesli-ed tables sit, forlorn and sad.
No more the Toynbee fire to heat the grate,
no Monbiot to shame us from our bad
earth-wrecking habits. We must mourn the fate
of letter-writers with high-minded whine
parted from publication, and the starrier
of crossword setters — Paul, Shed, Philistine —
now joined in cryptic heaven with Araucaria.
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