In Competition No. 3172 you were invited to submit a poem about the government’s coronavirus messaging.
Many of you, nudged no doubt by the title of the challenge, went for Milne pastiche. Take a bow, Martin Brinkworth: ‘When R was 1/ It had just begun…’; Brian Murdoch: ‘Boris Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, when he became PM…; and Sylvia Fairley: ‘Hush! Hush! Whisper your fears,/ Boris Johnson is planning his tiers…’.
I also liked Emma Teichmann’s natty twist on ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’: ‘Rishi’s in the counting house/ Printing heaps of money,/ BoJo’s in the dog house —/ He’s no longer very funny…’ And Janine Beacham’s villanelle captured well the deadening circularity of it all.
The winners, printed below, are led by W.J. Webster, whose poem finishes with a nice Rumsfeldian flourish. They earn £30.
Behind all the figures that spoke from the stage Lay a wonderful wizardly all-knowing Sage:‘Beware!’ said its mouthpiece, with eyebrows like thunder,‘Stay two yards apart or you’ll be six feet under;And unless you’re prepared for a premature death,You must wash your hands spotless like Lady Macbeth.’But
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