Competition | 27 February 2010

In Competition No. 2635 you were invited to incorporate the following homophones into a poem bemoaning the general decline in standards of literacy: ‘elicit’, ‘illicit’, ‘lesson’, lessen’, ‘Dane’, ‘deign’, ‘dissent’, ‘descent’.
From time to time, a challenge triggers rumblings of discontent in the competitive ranks, and to judge by the exasperated note accompanying one entry — ‘you can’t imagine how much I hate this comp’ — this was one of them.

Its prescriptive nature is not to everyone’s taste, admittedly (a maverick few chose simply to ignore the theme altogether); and I did regret having to disqualify some good entries because one of the specified homophones was missing. What’s more, though most competitors did manage to incorporate them all, the results were on the stilted side, which I think is down more to the restrictive brief than to any lack of skill or ingenuity on your part.
Commendations to Katie Mallett, Adrian Fry, Mike Morrison, and Roger Theobald, who were unlucky losers. I could almost see the steam coming out of Basil Ransome-Davies’s ears as I read his tongue-in-cheek why-oh-why rant, but it was Mary Holtby who impressed me most. She pockets the bonus fiver, while her fellow winners, printed below, get £25 each.

Why do we call them lessons?
They lessen day by day
And as we lavish less on them
It leaves more time for play.
Most labour’s now illicit:
Why dredge the past with pain
Just to elicit who came first,
The Roman or the Dane?

Deign to dissent from oldies,
Wrapped in their mortal coil:
We’ll lock up Locke and happily
Let Boyle go off the boil.
Assent to plumb Avernus —
(Who he?) where others went
And found descent an easy ride
But toilsome the ascent…
Mary Holtby

Why oh why has no one learned the lesson?
The masses only want illicit thrills.
They lack the taste for civilised expression
And can’t acquire the proper language skills.