COMPETITION

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Weirdo

Jaspistos

IN COMPETITION NO. 1795 you were invited to write a surrealist sonnet or a sonnet about Surrealism.

The earliest poem to qualify as 'surreal- ist' is probably 'A Non-Sequitur' by Richard Corbet (d. 1635), the gardener's son who became Bishop of Norwich and wrote 'Farewell, Rewards and Fairies'. Dig these crazy lines:

Blewe crocodiles foame in the toe Blind meal-bagges do follow the doe A ribb of apple braine spice Will follow the Lancashire dice Hark how the chime of Pluto's pisspot cracks To see the rainbowes wheele ganne, made of flax.. .

Adele Geras, Bill Greenwell, Alanna Blake and Paul Griffin get commenda- tions, but the prizewinners printed below (£20 to each) picked themselves. The bonus bottle of Drummond's Pure Malt Scotch whisky goes to M. R. Macintyre.

Although wise mothers fear an onion dome An iron bouquet will signal your respect: Soon their toboggans will convey them home.

Who does not love a flowery analect However rude? Who has not, after all, Admired the ruthless, geometric tread Of chocolate-coated locusts up the Mall Reminding one of something one has read?

A sapphire in the samphire may be rare (Samphire in sapphire rarer, as we know), But is a Christmas kraken sleeping there?

Alas, the Pulsatilla's pulse is slow,

And on the shore the long-lashed lobsters weep,

One murmuring, 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe.'

(M. R. Macintyre)

How Ernst that frottage is! One should not laugh — Mir6,Mir6, upon the window-wall (Those flaccid watches tell no time at all!) — That's Jacques Prevert there, in that photo- graph, Fag-end and cap and conscious workman's scarf?

How sweet they were! Rene, old Andre, Paul . . .

Only half-Marx for Dali, now? . . . Still, tall And flaming, stalks the unperturbed giraffe To haunt our minds, and teach us what is real Is not the whole of life; that what's enjoyed May far transcend the surfaces' appeal; To tune our senses, otherwise employed, To know the horror, humour; and to feel The dream and nightmare, both: so who's afreud?

(Alyson Nikiteas) All clever stuff, no doubt, but is it Art?

Peculiar pictures by peculiar chaps; It seems this oddball movement had its start With Bosch — significantly named, perhaps? — (Dutch, 1450 to 1516), The first to mix his paint with fantasy; Then came Blake's visions of a world unseen Prophet or madman? Men could not agree. And then, last member of this Crazy Gang, Mustachioed Dali, Superrealist, Who ended the whole business with a bang, And gave that sort of thing its final twist. Their day is done; scenes cleverer, acuter, Are generated now by the computer.

(Stanley J. Sharpless) A naked woman lying on a dish, Her hair in ribboned plaits which end in snakes, Has for her fingers bundles of small fish, Diamonded eyes and breasts like birthday cakes; The paving stones are cracked, and a dragoon In glorious uniform is shelling peas, While from the sky a swollen sickle moon Is dropping tennis nets into the seas Which form the foreground to this friendly scene.

A flock of finches forms a sort of crown.

The nude is cobalt and the sky grass-green.

A massive disembodied eye looks down.

I think that's all. Oh, I forgot the horse.

The title's Nude with Feathered Hat, of course.

(Gerard Benson) Magnetic fields consume my aunt's moustache While fish dissolve like apples on a clock.

My answering machine declines to wash.

Three sausages assault a yellow sock.

The artichokes go mad in Aberdeen, Except when phantom crocodiles draw maps, But no one knows the name of Graham Greene And no one cares if pyramids drink schnapps.

The sorrow of the manhole is extreme; It wrinkles like a spectrograph in pain.

My trousers have exploded at the seam, While ants devour the pencils of my brain.

The tragedy of life is bottled beer Banana telephone turd musketeer.

(Basil Ransome-Davis)