For Competition 3412 you were invited to submit a poem about the struggle of writing a poem.This challenge drew a larger-than–usual, heartfelt entry. Nicholas Whitehead’s limerick caught my eye:
A limerick writer from Slough
Said ‘I haven’t quite mastered the form.
I’ve got wit and pith,
And the scansion’s okay,
But I can’t get the buggers to rhyme!’
Frank Upton’s E.J. Thribb-inspired entry also deserves an appreciative nod, along with Harriet Elvin, Jane Newberry, Mike Morrison, Nicholas Lee and Bill Greenwell, but those printed below earn £25 John Lewis vouchers for their travails.
Readily, steadily, double dactylogy,
Perilous form with a galloping beat,
Throws us for loops as we higgledy-piggledy
Scramble to fall on our metrical feet.
Overembellishing counterproductively,
Often we find that our verses are packed
Full of superfluous, unsatisfactory
Vacuous dactyls we long to re-dact.
Though our obsession with sesquipedality
Normally isn’t a nettlesome quirk,
Struggles to channel it double-dactylically
Double the trouble and triple the work.
Coming to terms that are hexasyllabically
Fitting, with accents that happen to crest
Smack on their first and their antepenultimate
Syllables, renders us perfectly stressed.
Alex Steelsmith
Then, it was easy: once upon a time
each poem’s form was known and neatly planned.
Blank verse excepted, every line would rhyme
and metre be consistent. It all scanned.
Tastes change: the formal is no longer ‘in’.
Ditto the florid High Romantic Passion.
Pentameter (iambic)’s in the bin
and ballads are completely out of fashion.
Syntax and punctuation? – oh, come on!
But if you are confessional it’s fine
to ramble vaguely. Where’s your reader gone?–
Lost in untangling that opening line.
You feel this overwhelming urge to write,
from lyric thoughts to satire’s sharp attack
with unacknowledged legislator’s bite.
So, where d’you start? An empty page stares back.
D.A. Prince
Is there anything worse than grappling with verse?
The reason I’m struggling, to me it’s a puzzle,
I cannot find room for a paltry pantoum,
and I swear I could never indulge in a ghasal.
In poems romantic my mood is pedantic,
I’ve no inclination for baring my breast,
and sonnets Shakespearian, dull, antiquarian,
even Petrarchan, I bin with the rest.
I’ve tortured my brain on an unwreathed quatrain
and sestinas conducive to premature death,
I’m avoiding the hell of a vile villanelle
or a sad Sapphic ode till I breathe my last breath.
Calliope, infuse me, how can you refuse me?
I’m in need of a muse that will set me on fire
and end this frustration – with no inspiration
I’ll write my own eulogy, then I’ll expire.
Sylvia Fairley
My brain hurts and a lousy dumbness dulls
My wits, as though of Lotos had I snorted,
Or gorged on some mild sedative that lulls
Me Lethe-wards, all inspiration thwarted.
’Tis not through envy of that happy lot –
Sue, Sylvia, Janine and Baz and Bill
Who versify of some melodious plot
And sing of summer with full-throated skill –
Oh, for a draft, a hint, a phrase, a word!
Forlorn, I was not born for writer’s block.
Dark Muse, I listen – Sing, immortal bird!
Or must I pray Calliope might knock?
Adieu! Fled is all hope of poesy:
Is this a vision, or ChatGPT?
David Silverman
On we rode to Kastof, the city was unscathed,
No lines of dead, no queues for bread,
Before we dined, we bathed;
The rebels were a march away, the rebels were expected!
But now they say that yesterday
The rebels were deflected;
At last we found a refugee, a refugee with porters…
Who shared our meal and then revealed
He’d come to take the waters;
Rifle-fire at midnight! An ominous cantata!
Of, it transpired, just fireworks fired
For some medieval martyr.
Every time I blow it,
And frankly, it’s a bore:
To be the one war poet
Who’s still looking for a war.
Nick Syrett
It’s time to write a sonnet. Let me see,
First, three quatrains. The metre must be right,
And then a couplet; formal, structured, tight,
Wait – blast – I meant to rhyme ABAB,
Stick with Petrarchan then, keep each rule straight,
Octet, sestet and octave, that’s not hard,
Pentameter, iambic. Here we – wait,
I’ve gone Elizabethan. Bloody Bard.
Sod this. I’ll start a villanelle instead,
Some tercets, repetition, that will do,
Or else a double dactyl. Find a name
That stresses well, six syllables, like – ugh.
A haiku or a limerick, they’re easy,
Some bawdy innuendo, nudge, wink, cough,
Pretending I have meant this from the get-go,
My high tone, like my muse, has buggered off.
Janine Beacham
No. 3415: Seeing the light
You are invited to submit a lost poem by a well-known poet which makes us see him or her in a new light (16 lines maximum). Please email entries to competition@spectator.co.uk by midday on 27 August.
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