For the latest competition you were invited to compose odes on a Grayson Perry urn.
Jonathan Jones memorably described being in a roomful of Grayson Perry’s pots as ‘like being trapped in a room full of trendy folk talking bollocks’. Frank McDonald obviously agrees with this assessment. His ode begins: ‘Do Grayson Perry urns deserve an ode?/ Has modern art not shamed the Muse enough?/ That looks for beauty in a tortured toad/ And loads our galleries with frightful stuff?’
Elsewhere, the entry was chock-full of adroit Keatsian references. Honourable mentions go to Frank Upton, G.M. Davis, Sylvia Fairley and Graham King. The deserving winners below take £20 each.
W.J. Webster A form of classic shape and grace, Here covered in graffiti style, Which offers us a Janus face, Half snarl, half smile. It looks at once both butch and fey; A line that joins the modish dots To illustrate a crafty way Of making pots.
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