Spectator competition winners: poems about struggling to write a poem

The call for poems about the difficulty of writing a poem attracted a far-larger-than-usual entry. A.H. Harker’s punchy couplet caught my eye:

I’m stuck. Oh ****.

Elsewhere there were nods to Wordsworth, Milton and ‘The Thought Fox’, Ted Hughes’s wonderful poem about poetic inspiration. The winners below earn £25 each for their travails.

Brian Allgar I struggled with my verse time after time, Yet somehow I could never make it work. It scanned quite well, but there’s no use pretending My couplets had a satisfactory finish.

The words at their conclusion never matched; They would not rhyme, however hard I rubbed My head. The wretched quatrains fell apart, And I despaired of mastering the skill.

But then, a rhyming dictionary transfigured My verse; my audience no longer sniggered. The deftness of my rhymes became astounding, And critics’ praise unstintedly resounding.

I felt like stout Cortez — I mean, Balboa — Discovering Mexico — or was it Goa? A realm of gold, that book, no doubt about it; I don’t know how I ever did without it.

Frank McDonald It’s awfully hard to write a villanelle Because your thoughts are trapped by repetition.