Spectator competition winners: ‘Email’: poems after Auden’s ‘Night Mail’

In Competition No. 3280, you were invited to submit an updating of W.H. Auden’s ‘Night Mail’ entitled ‘Email’.

‘Night Mail’ was written to accompany a section of the excellent 1936 documentary about the London to Glasgow Postal Special directed by Basil Wright and Harry Watt (who described Auden as looking like a ‘half-witted Swedish deckhand’). Auden used a stopwatch as he was writing to ensure that each snippet of spoken verse fit the shot on which it commented. ‘We were experimenting to see whether poetry could be used in films,’ he said, ‘and I think we showed it could.’

A commendation to Ann Drysdale, Sylvia Fairley and Frank Upton, who accompanied his entry with the observation that in ‘Night Mail’ the poet’s first thoughts – ‘bringing the cheque and the postal order’ – are of money. The winners, printed below, pocket £25 each.

This is the email surfing the ether,
Cool from the Arctic or hot from Ibiza,
Email from loved ones, email from creeps,
Some to delete, some filed for keeps,
Email that greets you with Ciao or Buongiorno,
Email that flogs Californian porno,
Miserable memos, or, very much cheerier,
Catfishing scammers from coastal Nigeria.
Client