In Competition No. 3243, you were invited to submit a poem about the recent discovery of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance.
This comp, suggested by a kind reader who thought a chink of good cheer amid the general bleakness worth celebrating, elicited a smallish entry in which echoes ranged from Keats to Benny Hill. An honourable mention to David Silverman’s haiku:
Fuss over a boat Goes to show the importance Of being Ernest
The winners, printed below, net their authors £25 each.
Chill polar sirens wooed Ernest H. Shackleton, Singing him southward with Wintry allure. Ice trapped and sank him, then Hypergelidity Deep undersea helped his Ship to endure. Weddell Sea life forms are Contra-xylophagous. Vessels of wood are a Snack they abjure. Far from a warmer sea’s Biodiversity, Shackleton sank where his Ship could endure. Chris O’Carroll
Two thousand fathoms deep Endurance lies at rest upon the Weddell Sea’s soft bed, and, though abandoned, finds a different guise, suff’ring a sea-change once her crew had fled. The
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