In Competition No. 2579 you were invited to submit a poem in praise of or denouncing the world wide web. In his book The Cult of the Amateur, Andrew Keen, thorn in the side of Web 2.0, rails against the calamitous effects of user-generated web content on our culture, bemoaning the emergence of ‘digital narcissism’ and the resulting proliferation of inane and banal content in cyberspace. On the whole, you agree with him, although there are a few fans out there. Brian Murdoch begins: ‘I think I should like to perform a celebratory pirouette/ to honour the w.w.w. aka the internet…’.
It was a strong field this week. Mary Holtby and Josh Ekroy deserve a special mention but the winners, printed below, get £25 each. Bill Greenwell nabs the extra fiver.
There isn’t a curfew. Whenever you surf you
Enter a paradise, perfect and plangent,
Where blaggers and bloggers are wrapped in a
fog as
Strange as exotic. Go off at a tangent,
And hobnob with fictional friends, whose
addiction
To factoids is wholly and highly perverse,
Whose virtual lives and crepuscular drives
Have the stock of a doctor, and allure of a nurse.
So wide and so spatial, so oddly palatial,
With corridors, closets, and stairs out of Escher,
You may dawdle and doodle, cross borders, or
noodle
At leisure, with pleasure, without any pressure.
Out gazing and grazing at all that’s e-mazing,
You may cruise on, pseudonymous, larking and
lurking —
There’s so much to check on; interstices beckon,
Which, whatever their net effect, always beat
working.
Bill Greenwell
I’m www dotty!
For many nights now I’ve been sat on my botty
’Cause social routines aren’t my cup of Darjeeling.
I down loads of coffee to send sleep a-reeling
Then, pyjamas on snugly, I’m at my PC.
I salute you beholdenly Tim Berners-Lee!
Yeah, who could say no to this virtual existence?
No need to go out and face bookshop assistants;
I can order my books from a gushing, great river.
There’s bomb-building; sex clips; one could
auction one’s liver!
But as mice pace their mats all around every
nation,
There is something befalling the web generation:
We need a site for sore eyes ’cause our vision’s
gone googly;
Could that smell be BO? We’ve been washing
quite frugally.
Weave forgot how too rite; two yoos languidge;
to tork.
And our botties are massive — we’re too fat to
walk!
Celeste Francis
In the days of 300-baud modems
We hoarded the words that we spent.
They were terse and precise as shapes chiselled
from ice,
For a long one would cost you a cent!
And we thought of the words that we sent, tra-la-
la.
Nowadays we go tirelessly blogging
And we use all the words that we please.
Thus their value’s diminished, and soon as we’re
finished
We pound out a slew more with ease.
Digitalia’s a dreadful disease, tra-la-la.
We should go back to thinking in haiku
Or an epigram cut to the quick.
Such renewed parsimony might cut the baloney
With which every inbox is thick
(Though I still can delete with a click, tra-la-la,
Though I still can delete with a click).
R.S. Gwynn
Cat needs grooming? Horse needs shoeing?
For the wasteful and the frugal,
Topics by the thousand queuing,
Centripetal, centrifugal,
Centri — anything that’s doing,
Hear it clamouring on Google.
For you, peoples all are calling,
Dyaks, Maoris, Clan McDougal,
Hear their endless caterwauling,
Bang the drum and blow the bugle!
All our lives would be appalling,
Were it not for lovely Google.
Paul Griffin
When I have fears that I have ceased to be
I type my name in Google, just to check
I’m not dead yet. Still no obituary.
Then with a few more clicks, the day’s a wreck:
Such idle titbits dancing on the screen!
The weather in Llandudno, cut-price cars,
Some invitations verging on obscene.
A Second Life of sub-prime avatars.
Cats in cute poses, holidays from hell —
The choice is infinite, but time is not.
The web’s seductive powers can weave a spell
Where sense and sensibility’s forgot.
Too easy on its lonely shore to sink
And give up all capacity to think.
D.A. Prince
No brave new world wide web for me —
a cyberphobe with no PC —
Methinks I’d rather rot in hell
than get myself a URL;
You’ll not tempt me, with any bait,
to go online to shop or date.
On stony ground you’ll cast your pod
if aimed at me — so help me God:
To surf the net, download a file
or keep a blog is not my style,
I’m not on email: all my spam
consists of tins of ersatz ham,
At least until there comes a day
They take the printed books away —
And literature cannot be seen
except by browsing on a screen —
Un-networked I’ll remain with pride
and, unapologetic, hide
From virtual reality,
and will not put up with IT.
Penelope Mackie
No. 2582: Proverbial?
You are invited to submit proverbs for the 21st century (150 words maximum). Entries to ‘Competition 2582’ by 5 February or email lucy@spectator.co.uk.
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