In Competition No. 3090 you were invited to submit a recently discovered lost poem by a well-known poet that makes us see him or her in a new light. Step forward, Philip Larkin, flower arranger, Slough fan John Betjeman and knickers-on-fire Emily Dickinson. Congratulations all round are in order this week, but I especially admired Alanna Blake’s palinodic villanelle from Dylan Thomas:
Calm down, relax, accept the dying light,
It will be unaffected by your rage,
For all our sakes, give up this futile fight…
And G.M. Davis’s Tennyson revealing what he really thought of her maj:
What a prissy old Queen is Victoria!
She looks like a case of dysphoria
In the straitest of lace
With that vinegar face,
Though they say that in private she’s whorier.
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