Spectator competition winners: ‘On First looking into Article 50 of the Treaty of Rome’

The latest competition asked for poems with titles which riff on that of Keats’s sonnet ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’. Although it was a varied and inventive entry there was a fair amount of doubling-up: while G.M. Davis and Tracy Davidson decided to speculate on what the first perusal of an Ann Summers shop window might be like, impressive entries from both Jayne Osborn and Alanna Blake revealed the contents of a teenage daughter’s diaries. There was a lot of skill on show elsewhere too: commendations to Paul Evans, A.R. Duncan-Jones, Tony Goldman, Tim Raikes John Whitworth and John Priestland. The winners take £25 each. Max Ross nabs £30.

Max Ross On First Looking into a Telescope ‘How beautiful the moon’, I heard folk say, ‘When captured in a telescopic view,’ But I, alas, was not among the few Who scanned the wonders of the Milky Way Until a tutor summoned me, one day, To share the lunar secrets that he knew And in a moment rumours all came true.