Sonnets on the universe

In Competition No. 3206, you were invited to supply a sonnet on the universe.

The late Frank Kermode reckoned that the sonnet form is just too easy — try a double sestina, if you’re after a challenge, he said — and comps such as this one certainly draw the crowds. A bumper crop of deftly wrought entries showed great wit and imagination, though some stumbled at that tricky final couplet. I was very much taken with several excellent twists on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18: Joe Houlihan, John O’Byrne, Tim Raikes and Tony Harris take a bow. Others who shone brightly were Roy Ballard, Martin Parker, Nick MacKinnon, Frank Upton, Nick Syrett, Dorothy Pope, Matt Quinn and Richard Spencer.

The winners, printed below, are rewarded with £20 each.

The cosmos never featured in her life,She’d read no scientific articlesHad Sitwell’s ‘Mrs Hague, the gardener’s wife’,On space or subatomic particles;The weekly round of chores was all her lot,Days washing, baking, cooking and the rest,Though, on the Sabbath, off to church she’d trotWith brooch and bible, dressed in Sunday best;Fenced in was Mrs Hague’s small universe,While stars wheeled overhead she’d spend her hoursOn tasks she found sufficiently diverse,Preparing fruits for jam or tending flowers.The