The request for poetic previews of the day Article 50 is triggered produced passionate voices from both sides of the Brexit divide with many of you recruiting distinguished poets to your cause. D.A. Prince cleverly appropriated ‘Vitaï Lampada’, Sir Henry Newbolt’s tribute to English patriotism: ‘There’s a dread-filled rush in the House tonight/ With Article 50 poised to go,/ After lies black as pitch and the blind claiming sight/ And nothing to halt, now, the whole sorry show’; Jennifer Moore’s entry channelled the spirit of Dr Seuss: ‘The sun did not shine./ We were too sad to work,/So we cut out Farage/ And threw darts at his smirk.’ And Paul Carpenter reworked Gray’s ‘Elegy’: ‘The curfew tolls the knell of lost UK…’ Nice work all round.
Nigel Stuart and Jack William Ruddy earn commendations, Basil Ransome-Davies pockets £35 and his fellow winners take £30.
Basil Ransome-Davies
The Martian tv viewers were convulsed by ribald
mirth;
Some fool had pulled the Brexit trigger down on
Planet Earth.
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