In Competition No. 2771 you were invited to provide a rhymed witch’s spell to bring someone or something either good or ill.
Most of you were in cursing mood (though Katie Mallett provided a welcome ray of sunshine: ‘I would cast a spell for happiness…’). Targets included nuisance callers, Bill Gates, leylandii, Downton Abbey and Alex Salmond.
I was tickled by G. Chadwick’s curse, in monorhyme, on Boris Johnson’s barnet — ‘It’s why he polled the lion’s share/ May he start moulting everywhere…’ — and by Dorothy Pope’s ‘Spell to Make a Horrid Teacher Disappear’. Adrian Fry cast a potent cantrip on the creator of Harry Potter: ‘I am but a jealous muggle, J.K. Rowling my bête noire,/ This, a spell concocted for her, out of Voldemort’s grimoire…’
Frank Upton, W.J. Webster and Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead also shone; Alanna Blake was not alone in directing a dose of ill will the judge’s way.
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