In Competition No. 2907 you were invited to imagine that poets, living or dead, had been recruited to compose verse discouraging antisocial behaviour on the underground.
This challenge was prompted by the results of Transport for London’s real-life efforts to use poetry to prompt Tube users to mind their manners: the poems in question feature rhyme and scansion that would have made McGonagall blush.
Over to the experts, then. Adrian Fry’s Emily Dickinson — ‘Because I would not mind the gap’ — was an impressive runner-up, as were Charles Clive-Ponsonby-Fane, Mike Morrison and Alanna Blake. The winners, printed below, pocket £15 each.
Come friendly bombs, and fall on those
Who clip their nails or pick their nose
Or drop their knickers on the train
Twixt Wembley Park and Rayners Lane.
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