Spectator Competition: Lines of beauty

For Competition 3427 you were invited to write a paean on a place traditionally considered to be ugly.

In an accomplished entry, in which many took inspiration from William McGonagall, the Bard of Dundee, honourable mentions go to Ralph Goldswain, Richard Warren and Elizabeth Kay. The winners, led by Bill Greenwell on the Pompidou Centre, are rewarded with £25 John Lewis vouchers.

You wear your insides on the out

Like knickers over jeans –

Your architect’s a gadabout

On art’s amphetamines –

You’re lost inside each scaffold-tube

Each Quadro-coloured duct

As garish as a cheap Galoob

For us to deconstruct

But how I love your bold and brash

Riposte to holy templi

Where art is holy balderdash

Dressed up for school assembly –

I love your childish fol-de-rol

The snooks you’re always cocking

Your dress beneath your camisole

Your sultry flash of stocking.

Bill Greenwell

Star of Siberia, snowy Norilsk,

Permafrost dreamland where factories puff,

Tenements boldly stand up to wild blizzards,

Smog-clouded diamond hewed out of the rough,

Soviet sternness, gruff bear of the Arctic,

Gulag-straight lines delight, ice never melting,

Glittering Moscow can’t outshine its beauty,

Glowing with industry, nickel and smelting,

Chemical romance, the rich scent of diesel,

Cossacks would flee but I’m frozen in rapture,

Prettily pastel-toned Leninsky Prospekt,

Gives me a thrill that the Med cannot capture.

No noxious greenery taints its pure concrete,

Closed to outsiders, as shy as a dove,

Scorn rays of sunshine as darkness enfolds us,

I’m choked by toxins, but mostly by love.

Janine Beacham

Like the hoops upon the axes of Odysseus,

Round the passage of his arrows – true and free:

So the A3’s serried junctions,

With facilitating functions,

Cheer the traveller from the City to the sea;

There’s Wandsworth Gyratory,

Stag Lane, Coombe, but in its glory

It’s Hook, sweet Hook, that’s loveliest to me;

Oh, the timbre of the tyres upon the slip road!

Oh, the concrete stanchions, gold as April snow!

As the 243’s rotations,

With their sylvan aspirations,

Circle high above the carriageways below;

And Southborough and Hook embrace,

In semi-circled interface,

That softly bids me stay, as on I go.

Nick Syrett

Brutal? A harsh word used by those who find

your face to wilfully material.

But concrete-massive’s how you were designed –

nothing Romantic, nothing fey/ethereal.

You state the City’s power, Barbican:

grey curving flanks, impregnable and dense,

and hinting at defiance by your span.

A reassuring solid permanence.

And yet green spaces flourish in your heart,

music excites the ear and feeds the soul,

drama plays out, there’s innovation, art:

food for both mind and body, making whole

                  those seekers who escape these light-

                                    weight days,

                  our present shoddy world. You’ve earned this praise.

D.A. Prince

O wondrous world, that has such sights sublime,

Such peerless beauty e’en surpassing Slough’s –

Betj’man! Thou should’st be living at this time –

This miracle of malls and concrete cows;

This perfect straight-edged gem of geometry.

The galaxy hath nought to show more fair

Than Milton Keynes, in all its majesty!

This Milton Keynes! – a paradise laid bare;

A wonderland of roundabouts and roads

And business parks like those of Ancient Rome,

And modernist – nay, heavenly abodes,

All crowned by that great Giza-esque snow dome –

Dear God! The very streets are paved with gold:

MK – the eighth great wonder of the world!

David Silverman

I praise the humble rubbish dump

That brought my boyhood joy

And made my world a brighter place

With each discarded toy.

Old bicycles with broken wheels

That rusted in the rain

Could, with some ingenuity,

Be made to serve again.

I’d look around this magic place

That offered gifts galore.

Hour after hour with childish faith

I’d hopefully explore.

In the wonderland of childhood

Where miracles occur

I’d search among rejected things

To find Excalibur.

Frank McDonald

I had a dream I was in hell;

Its warmth and lighting cast a spell;

Compared to a London inner city

Hell was pleasant, hell was pretty.

I wandered round there all alone

And no one tried to steal my phone,

Serenity was everywhere

No murderous streets, no awful mayor.

Then I awoke to realise

That London was before my eyes

And seeing its horror and its pain

I wished I was in hell again.

Max Ross