In Competition No. 3234, you were invited to submit either a poem or a short story entitled ‘Covid’s metamorphoses’.
Thanks are due to Frank Upton, who suggested this tremendous and timely challenge. It attracted a pleasingly large and diverse entry (overwhelmingly made up of verse rather than prose), in which the limerick was well represented. Here is an example from Jerome Betts:
A virus with spikes like a mine Whose effects can be no less malign Has a trick that’s worth noting As it changes its coating To defeat each fresh vaccine design.
Other highlights included a riff, from R.M. Goddard, on ‘Ghost Town’ by the Specials, Martin Parker’s twist on Noël Coward’s ‘Don’t Let’s Be Beastly to the Germans’ and Yeatsian echoes courtesy of Max Ross.
The winning entries are printed below and earn their authors £25 each.
The virus dealt me an Olympian blow, Left me like Io — ravished from on high, So reeling, so brain-fogged, I didn’t know Whether I was a quadruped or bi. The hands of Heaven seized me like a pawn, A prop, a toy of trivial concern. They choked my nights and darkened every dawn. They taught me I had new pain yet to learn. Callisto-like I growled and mourned and clawed, Acting out loss-of-language desolation. For one who has felt cast off by a god, A constellation’s little consolation. The hits keep coming when you catch the eye Of deities. Revenge and appetite Tell you their will. You dare not ask them why, Nor try to tell them what you think is right. Chris O’Carroll
They fuck us up, the Covid strains, and screw us proper when they do. Mutating madly, changing lanes, they spread like crazy, then renew. Outrageous in their global span, as hydras sprouting endless heads, they hand on misery to man, mad monsters bouncing on our beds.
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