In Competition No. 2426 you were invited to supply a poetic invitation from one friend to another to come and stay in the country and enjoy its pleasures.
The title was meant to suggest that I was looking for a charming, straight-faced piece such as Horace or our 17th-century poets might have written, but most of you refused to throw away the jester’s cap and bells. ‘Come to Devon soon. But hurry./ Now’s the season we spread slurry,’ warbled Martin Parking, while Mark Ambrose offered rural entertainment of a most unusual sort: ‘There is also bell-ringing if you are still keen./ We ring in the nude: it’s a sight to be seen.’ The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and G.M. Davis has the bonus fiver.
Dear city friend, you spend your week
Attending exhibitions
Or shopping at a smart boutique
For further acquisitions
Or dining where the ultra-chic
Obey their dietitians,
But still the urban pavements reek
Of ordure and emissions.
In
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