You are invited to describe an encounter between Bertie Wooster and James Bond in the style of either P.G. Wodehouse or Ian Fleming. Maximum 150 words. Entries to ‘Competition 2556’ by 31 July or email jamesy@greenbee.net.
In Competition No. 2553 you were invited to write a sonnet by the Mistress in reply to the author of Sonnet 130.
Zounds! Such a pounding unkind Shakespeare
took
When Rival Poets used the sonnet’s power!
But who’s to bring their weighty words to book?
T.T., thou shouldst be living at this hour!
But ’cos thou art well dead, I’ll sing of those
Who gave the Avon Swan such well-earned welly.
Seven share the purse; the extra tenner goes
For understated ire to good Ray Kelley.
Ray, Ros, Baz, Virge, Paul, Noel, Webster came
Hearing the injured Mistress’ plaintive cries.
With dozens that I haven’t space to name
They cut the egregious ego down to size.
All showed the ‘gentle’ bard could play the
beast.
Our Swan is upped, plucked, trussed, stuffed,
roasted. Feast!
Honesty is your policy, Will. And mine.
Your honesty gives you the chance to air
Your scorn for sonneteers who lard each line
With phrases of such fulsome false compare.
Mine lets me censure both hyperbole
And exploitation, and now bids me say —
With both feet on the ground — it seems to me
Those ‘black wires’ go too far the other way.
You failed to mention that I wear a brow
Of Egypt, lacking Helen’s beauty… Why?
Because, Will, you’d recited proofs enow
You saw me through no frantic lover’s eye.
Your honesty and mine are out of joint:
How could you use me so to make a point?
Ray Kelley
Thou lov’st me, though my face doth please
thee not?
Well, thou art no Adonis, to be sure!
Thou think’st my voice a tuneless viol? What?
Thou know’st not I thy grating voice abhor?
My smell assails thy senses? Oh, what pique,
Complaining of what thou dost stink of, too!
For, lest I breathe thy body’s noxious reek,
I use a nosegay when thou dost me woo.
Expect not thou to win a gracious swan,
Whilst thou an ugly duckling still remain;
The wonder is thy mistress waits upon
Thy pleasure, when thou art so inurbane.
The truth is, we possess nor charm nor grace,
And so for love we do ourselves abase.
Virginia Price Evans
Call not the kettle black. Once turned to dust
Receding hairline, shown in Droeshout print,
Or natty beard on bourgeois Stratford bust
Will scarce of an Adonis give a hint.
And Chandos portrait, earring well in synch,
With girly collar casually undone
O’er velvet doublet painted black as ink
Will not suggest a suitor full of fun.
The Grafton picture, e’en if it is of thee,
Doth show a callow youth, albeit with locks,
A little more felicitous to see.
(Your baldness always will attract some knocks.)
You crave a final couplet packed with praise?
Go, shake your ears — I won’t retract a phrase.
Ros Aitken
Why, Billy Shakes, you clever little swine —
Ambivalence could be your middle name.
I get the drift — ‘my funny Valentine’;
I’m sub-prime but you love me all the same.
So far, so good. Poets have overdone
The lavish, fulsome, hyperbolic trope,
And friendly frankness can be kinda fun.
Let’s do without sweet nothings and soft soap.
But Bill, my dear old chrome-domed dramaturge,
Whose gut is not the slenderest I’ve seen,
Whose armpits are where several drains converge,
Whose beard is lived in and whose teeth are
green,
Do not forget that when it comes to candour
The words to mind are ‘sauce’ and ‘goose’ and
‘gander’.
Basil Ransome-Davies
Well thanks for that. Now might I have a word?
Your ‘false compare’ is what we girls adore.
We like to add a bit when Nature’s erred:
What do you think those pots and jars are for?
You’re just like every other selfish poet —
And I’ve had more than several in my time —
Our flaws are flashed in verse before we know it.
You’d strip your mother naked for a rhyme.
How do you think you’d like it if I jeered
About your sagging cheeks, your portly frame,
Your tragic hairline and that silly beard,
And then declared I loved you just the same?
Who wants to hear their worst bits picked upon?
No one, not even Avon’s bleeding swan.
Noel Petty
How hard it is for one so much traduced
To see true meaning in a poet’s ways,
To know, beneath the many insults loosed,
Real passion with its paradox of praise.
Who seeks by clever turns to win our trust
Should know our woman’s nature, and take
thought,
Should offer love, but never speak of lust,
Assume perfection that cannot be bought.
No talk of wires, dun breasts, or breath that reeks,
For love is blind, and blindly reaffirms,
However cleverly it writes or speaks,
Its willingness to see beyond such terms.
No more; for both of us must be forgiving:
Writers and ladies have to earn their living.
Paul Griffin
My poet’s deepest lines are on his brow
Where Time has dragged its harrow, year on year;
If hair be waves, his tide is ebbing now
As more and more uncovered shores appear.
I could have had a sapling green and fresh,
Delighting in his ways of pleasing me.
Instead I’m faced with Autumn in the flesh,
The drooping branch of some old Arden tree.
His sere and yellow leaves become a book
With nothing fair to say or sweet to sing;
And yet this black pot sputtering on its hook
Once seemed to me a songbird on the wing.
Ah! if his verses should, by ill chance, last,
May they be printed with this counterblast!
W.J. Webster
No 2556: When Bertie met Bond
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