COMPETITION

Writer's block

Jaspistos

IN COMPETITION NO. 2038 you were asked for a poem with the above title, using `block' as a rhyme-word and containing at least five other fellow rhyme-words.

My son, last month, from New York: `Dad, I've got a bad case of WB. What do you advise — getting blind drunk, writing rubbish for a few days till it gets better, or a shrink?' The first two, in that order, but on no account the third,' replied Doc Spock. The best summing up of this universal and most distressing complaint came from Alyson Nikiteas:

0 gentle reader, there is no frustration So groanworthy as Scribal Oppilation.

You trawled through the dictionaries and encyclopedias for rhyme-words even Conrad's secret agent, Verloc, made an appearance — but you missed the trea- surable `angekkok', which my old Chambers used to delightfully define as 'an Eskimo conjuror'. This has now been adjusted, in response, no doubt, to Inuit protests.

Commendations to Lucy Courtenay, David Barton, John E. Cunningham and Geoff Thurman. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bottle of The Macallan The Malt Scotch whisky goes t0 Ray Kelley.

Bob Southey's such an easy man to mock. His Vision Byron panned as Laureate schlock, And in that scathing counter-Judgment chose To censure his 'blank verse and blanker prose'. Carroll's old Father William took a swipe At Southey's much more decorous prototyPe- But let's remember, while we're taking stock, That Peacock's Mr Feathernesting Tory Has given us After Blenheim, Inchcape Rock, Lodore, The Scholar and the Three Bears storY. Forget Kehama, Roderick and Madoc:

It's time to honour one who braved the jeers, Sat down to write, and wrote against the clock Day in day out, for fifty slogging years And couldn't spare the time for writer's block. (Ray KelleY) While on a trip to Antioch St Paul threw down his pen. This act came as an awful shock To Simon Peter and his flock Of apostolic men.

`You can't do that, Paul,' Peter cried, 'We're running out of stock!

And though they've never once replied, Corinthians, all goggle-eyed,

Await the postman's knock.'

`I've worked myself around the clock,' Paul answered wearily. `Behold me in my Ragnarok. Ah, what has caused the writer's block? Epistolography?' (D.B. Jenkinson) Oliver Goldsmith had to stay confined To bed, because his clothes were all in hock. Then Johnson came, to rescue, not to mock, As many richer friends had been inclined. In fiction, as in life, we often find

Thaal? ove.,

like that of Alton Locke, Theiling tailor-poet of humble stock, Can cause a certain impotence of mind.

One Frenchman said that sex might cause this blight. `Young men', Ophelia sang — but failed to shock Hamlet to action — 'were to blame, by cock.' Elizabethans often got things right!

Raleigh, the most flamboyant of their flock, Returned to verse again on his last night, Remarked, next day, the axe was sharp and bright, And then endured the final writer's block.

(0. Bonfield) Once at my desk, that old familiar shock A sudden dearth of usable ideas.

Whatever happened to my ample stock? They seem to leak away like secret tears.

I type — and then I wipe — a score of words: Two sentences of undiluted schlock, As fit for cherishing as twenty turds. It's now eleven by the kitchen clock.

I tell myself that writing is a craft, That studied perseverance will unlock The safe of thought. But nothing .. . oh, it's daft. I guess I'll take a walk around the block.

Back home for tea, I realise I'm a sock Lost in an empty cosmic launderette; All my creative urges run amok,

But not a single thing has happened yet.

(Basil Ransome-Davies) My bottom drawer contains a largish stock Of uncompleted learned articles.

There's 'Moorish Tombs in Upper Languedoc', `Neutron Decay in Alpha Particles', `The Journeys of the Younger Havelock', A note on sex in adolescent rooks And something on the Hittite water-clock.

I've also made a start on several books: A History of Execution Dock, How Interest Rates Determine Public Spending And Diet Cooking with the Burmese Wok.

The problem's always how to find an ending.

I never can; and heartless people mock

My failure. But this time I'm going to manage.

They just want sixteen lines on writer's block.