Spectator competition winners: in praise of the sonnet

In Competition No. 3344 you were invited to submit a poem expressing feelings – positive or negative – about a poetic form. The standard was impressively high, with near-misses for Max Ross, Sylvia Fairley and David Silverman, whose entry ended by rendering Paradise Lost in a single haiku (‘Angel turns nasty/ Temptation in the garden/ A big mistake. Huge’). All below win a well-deserved £25.

The way its rigid pattern goes,

The triolet repeats a lot.

A canny reader quickly knows

The way its rigid pattern goes.

It’s an enchanting form to those

Whose memory’s completely shot.

The way its rigid pattern goes,

The triolet repeats. A lot.

You get to hear this first line thrice.

And this one is repeated, too.

In triolets, that’s not a vice.

You get to hear this first line thrice!

Familiarity feels nice,

Providing comfort. Lucky you!

You get to hear this first line thrice.

And this one is repeated, too.

Max Gutmann

Yes, it brought me fame and fortune,

But it’s horribly pervasive,

And I wish I’d never nicked it

From that wretched Kalevala!

Trouble is, trochaic rhythm

Never seems to want to leave you,

Till you cannot form a sentence,

Even talking to the milkman:

‘Leave an extra pint tomorrow

And I’ll settle up on Friday.’

If I try to write a sonnet,

Or some stuff in terza rima,

In comes Hia-bloody-watha’s

Tumpty tumpty tumpty tumpty!

Poets should from me take warning:

Trochees turn your brain to jelly.

Brian Murdoch

A villanelle is rigid in its form,

With five tercets, and quatrain to conclude:

It worships repetition as the norm.

In poetry, it’s true, one must conform,

But this feels like a supper badly stewed:

A villanelle is rigid in its form:

Good poetry makes waves, linguistic storms,

But not the villanelle, with lines renewed:

It worships repetition as the norm.

A poet knows she’s failed if readers yawn,

And see her as a fixed, unchanging dude:

A villanelle is rigid in its form.

For Speccie comps it’s too long to perform:

To 19 lines it’s resolutely glued:

It worships repetition as the norm.