COMPETITION

Anti-verse

Jaspistos

IN Competition No. 1485 you were invited to write a poem against poets and/or poetry.

The case against poetry was representa- tively put by Nicholas Murray:

Consider what you get from prose: Plain statements, lots of facts. Yet in a poem about the rose There's nothing said of bracts.

As for poets themselves, your targets divided themselves roughly into the new- wave beer-swilling Jason Strugnell type and the old-fashioned, sad, sandalled, vegetarian exemplified by Beachcomber's Roland Milk, one of whose sonnets ended: `These are the horses of the crescent moon,/ Who came, alas, too late, and went too soon.' This was a good I-love-to-hate competition in which the winners were harder than usual to choose. Peter Scupham and Paul Griffin were successful- ly serious and Keith Norman, J. C. M. Hepple, Nicholas Murray and Frank McDonald successfully parodic or comic, but the money — £12 apiece -- goes to those printed below, and the bonus bottle of 904 Gran Reserva from La Rioja Alta, the gift of Mr David Balls of Wines from Spain, belongs to T. Griffiths for his clever adaptation of Auden's poem 'A Free One'.

The Great Ones Watch any day his poetic pauses, see The dextrous handling of a pint, as he Slurps into verse, the toiler's envy.

`They are the Great Ones,' many say, but err. They are no kind of legislator, Nor ever the heart's navigator.

But faced with shocking failure learn to hedge, To build themselves a wordy subterfuge, Aesthete or boxer's profile, a slumped carriage: Travelling by hand-out from pub to pub The shortest way to the obscurest piece With beer's fidelity and beer's weakness.

(T. Griffiths) I've edited the parish mag at Hickley-on-the- Weir (A most contented chronicler) for many a mellow year.

How happily the Hatches and the Matches I proclaim! With what discreet encomiums obituaries frame!

I tame the Rector's hectorings and keep his syntax straight; Train tardiest contributors to heed a deadline's date; Maintain a tactful parity among the contributions From Choir and Mothers' Union, and other institutions.

But all this loving labour that I've lavished on The Link May soon be lost, its literary standards sag and sink.

Our new incumbent's prosy wife writes verse, and here's the rub— She sees The Link a platform for her tiresome Poets' Club.

By every post their offerings pour, such limp and mawkish mush, Out-doggerelling McGonagall, out-drooling Prudence Gush.

They're anxious that their names appear beneath each ghastly item.

I'll see they do, for Heaven forbid it might be

thought 1 write 'em! (Marguerite Kendrick)

When I am imagining what I would do If I were a big-shot dictator There's one prime ambition I'd like to see through And everything else can come later.

I'm going to erect a tall gibbet and stage At Laugharne — or perhaps Adlestrop - Where daily one poet should read half a page Before he, or she, took the drop.

A year of this culling'd reduce them a bit, But there'd be no pause in the weeding, The hangings would draw a good crowd— I admit That no one would go for the reading.

I'd be the most popular leader on earth, A man among men, a real hero.

The surplus of poets would change to a dearth; I'd keep it up till there was zero.

(Ginger Jelinek) I don't see why everybody thinks poetry's such a big deal, Or why it's supposed to be the only way to say how you feel.

It seems to me a poet is mainly a guy who declines To write his stuff in regular lines.

And as for rhyme, metre and rhythm, These days even the poets don't much bother with 'em.

But say all that to a poet, and he'll start to expound About how it's all to do with sound.

Some will even tell you that a poem can communicate its story in A language you don't know, like Urdu or Manchuryin.

In which case, anything that gets through has got to be subliminal, Which, if an adman tried it, you'd call criminal. It's the same the whole world over, I suppose One law for the poets and another for the pros.

(Noel Petty) Let noos be brought to Ghent from Aix On 'orseback or by bus, Let Wordsworf wander as a cloud — 'Oo gives a tinker's cuss?

Let bold 'Oratius 'old the bridge Orl on 'is tod — so wot?

An' let the 'Boy' stand 'on 'is 'ead Suppose 'is feet gets 'ot.

It's orl a flamin' waste of time.

That's why me poor 'eart bleeds For kids wot gets it tort at school Regardless of their needs.

Such fings as poems nowadays Is strickly for the birds . .

As long as there's a solid beat 'Oo needs the bloody words? (J. J. Webster) I do not love those poet chaps Who scribble ceaselessly about Their childhoods; how they took the raps From parents wielding rod or knout, Or how their lovers failed to see The innate purity of woe And damned them irremediably By giving them the old heave-ho.

They will harp on that draggy thing, That hackneyed piece I've read before, The bit about the dawn of spring, The keening on the stark seashore.

If only they'd buck up a bit, Let souls in torment rest awhile, Invoke sweet Thalia for wit And get me rolling in the aisle. (Gerry Hamill)