In Competition No. 2901 you were invited to write a poem in praise of a modern-day blot on the landscape.
Stephen Spender wasn’t praising pylons on aesthetic grounds in his notorious poem but celebrating the progress that these non-human structures embody: ‘There runs the quick/perspective of the future’.
The spirit of the 1930s poets — applied to those 21st-century gods technology and consumerism — was very much alive in what was a large and accomplished entry. It was tricky to single out just six prizewinners. Catherine Chandler, Tim Raikes, Bill Greenwell and Alanna Blake shone, but were narrowly pipped to the post by those printed below, who are rewarded with £25 each. Brian Murdoch pockets the bonus fiver.
Progress has led the human race unto
The plains of wickedness where we now live;
Vile, evil, sinful and degenerate,
Lacking our own moral imperative,
We can no longer tell what things are right,
But err in ethical despondency.
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