Spectator competition: buildings to love and hate (plus: rapping poet laureates)

Buildings can provoke strong reactions and the call for poems in praise or dispraise of a well-known one produced a satisfyingly robust entry. Frank McDonald took me at my word and submitted an actual concrete poem (not one made of concrete, but one in which, to quote Wikipedia, ‘the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem’. Mr McDonald and his fellow winners are rewarded with £25 each and this week’s bonus fiver goes to Brian Allgar for a double dactylic diatribe that would have pleased Guy de Maupassant. Maupassant hated the Eiffel Tower — ‘this tall, skinny pyramid of iron ladders, this giant and disgraceful skeleton’ — so much that he often sought refuge from it by eating lunch in its restaurant, which he said was the only place he couldn’t see it from.

Brian Allgar Gallical-phallical; Eiffel erected a Skyful of girders that’s French as a bean.

Typical architect’s Megalomania Boastful, priapic, and Rather obscene.

Tourist or resident, If you’re like me, and you Can’t stand the sight of this Clunky machine,

Climb to the top — it’s the One place in Paris where Eiffel’s monstrosity Cannot be seen.

Bill Greenwell I met a chap the other night Who wore his vest outside his shirt; I met his sister. She was tight. She wore her drawers outside her skirt.

And they reminded me of you, Your strange, external service pipes, Your architecture all askew — So, one of the bohemian types,

Was it, conjured your design? How dull! One of nature’s foolish bodgers, Who wore his brains outside his skull? I should have known it. Richard Rogers.

Your Quadro-tubes, from blue to red, Would make a toddler flush with pride: They hide a cuboid, drab and dead. Don’t start me on the art inside.

Mab Jones An armadillo without arms or legs; A rugby ball too tall and much too wide; In part thou art a goose’s golden egg Except with folk not yolk on your inside. Thou hast been slated in so many ways; Thou hast been rated great but also not; The poem on your front lights up our days But oh! That crazy, curvy shape thou’st got. This capital city is very young, And does not know itself so well as yet: It tries on shapes like dresses just for fun, Sometimes they fit, but others we regret. Like this globule, gargantuan and gold, An Easter egg made from a giant’s mould.

Frank McDonald O Leaning Tower  what mystic power   permits your imperfection?    For centuries     by small degrees      you’ve flirted with destruction.       Though dukes have gone,        you still abide;         you wobble on,          your city’s pride.           Now they have fixed            your shaky bricks             long may you lean in Pisa.

D.A. Prince Once there was air — untroubled, wind-swept,         free — where now this tower stands blocking the view of sky and emptiness, a travesty of progress as warped, brittle and askew.

The cutting edge of difference: there’s us, earthbound and plodding, crammed in streets         and crowds, and them, the glossy Shard-ees, glorious, high in unshadowed rapture in the clouds.

A sky-high dazzle, twizzle-stick of glass, all scintillation and loud glittering; it talks like money, has no sense of farce. We know it as a higher class of bling.

It’s not all bad. Some days thick mist casts doubt on flashy pride, with fog that’s heaven-sent to equalise sky, streets, and thus block out this towering statement of entitlement.

Ralph Rochester The wearied seaman dims his eyes But now, at last, through mist, descries The Liver Building’s massy block Against the Mersey’s sooty skies.

High as the clouds, tough as the rock, Built to defy all storm and shock A hundred years this pile has known A world of ships come safe to dock.

Two monstrous birds, as from a throne They govern, each his ordained zone, The one to sea, the one to shore Each rules a kingdom of his own.

Another century or more These Liver birds, with beak and claw, Will guard their palace strong and sure, Will guard their palace, strong and sure.

Andrew Motion wrote a rap in 2003 to celebrate Prince William’s 21st birthday. Your next challenge is to submit an example of another ill-advised foray into rap by a poet laureate. Please email entries of up to 16 lines to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 26 November.