In Competition No. 3197, you were invited to supply a poem to mark the death of Prince Philip.
I wondered if anyone, inspired by his touching lines on the death of his beloved Queen Victoria, might channel the poet and tragedian William McGonagall:
Alas! our noble and generous Queen Victoria is dead,And I hope her soul to Heaven has fled,To sing and rejoice with saints above,Where ah is joy, peace, and love.
But you mostly steered clear of forelock-tugging, instead striking a tone closer to that of poet laureate Simon Armitage, whose poem ‘The Patriarchs — An Elegy’ expressly avoided the kowtowing the Duke of Edinburgh hated: ‘I didn’t want the poem to be part of a chorus of sycophancy.’
Honourable mentions, in a medium-sized and wide-ranging entry, go to David Silverman, Michael Jameson, Adrian Fry, Basil Ransome-Davies, David Harris, David Shields and Bob Pringle.
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