Spectator competition winners: poems about HS2

The idea to ask for poems about HS2 came to me as I was listening on YouTube to W.H. Auden’s poem ‘Night Mail’, which he wrote to accompany a section of the terrific 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’). Not altogether surprisingly, the tone of the entry was less celebratory than Auden’s, with the notable exception of Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead’s prize-winning submission, written in the finest MacGonagallese. Her fellow victors are rewarded with £30 apiece and George Simmers snaffles the extra fiver.

George Simmers There’s a thunder down the line at eleven fifty       nine, And there’ll be another due at twelve o-six. Yes, several times each hour a train of massive       power Is hurtling busy townies through the sticks, And leering through the glass of a window in       first class (At meadows trashed and woodlands bulldozed       flat) Is a vicious tabby gent claiming dubious descent From Skimbleshanks, the famous Railway Cat.