In Competition No. 3013 you were invited to submit a poem in praise or dispraise of August.
There was a whiff of collusion about the entry this week, so many references were there to rubbish television, rubbish weather, fractious kiddies, tired gardens, traffic jams; as Katie Mallett puts it: ‘A turgid time of torpor and delay.’
But there were some sparkling, inventive turns. David Silverman was on pithy form:
Oh, thou cruellest month!
If August comes, then winter
Can’t be far behind.
Honourable mentions also go to A.H. Harker’s well-turned nod to Eliot, to Paul Freeman and to W.J. Webster, a rare but eloquent fan of August. The winners take £30 and John Whitworth pockets £35.
August, August, it’s the tops.
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