Spectator competition winners: poems about great works of art

In Competition No. 3341 you were invited to submit a poem about a great work of art –  a challenge prompted by George Steiner’s observation that ‘the best readings of art are art’.

The writer Geoff Dyer has cited W.H. Auden’s 1938 ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’ –  about Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus’ and our relationship to suffering – as an example of this: (‘About suffering they were never wrong,/ The old Masters: how well they understood/ Its human position…/ …how everything turns away/ Quite leisurely from the disaster…’).

So Nicholas Hodgson’s smart take on Auden’s poem came as no surprise (‘About suffering they were never right,/ The Old Masters;/ They should have known that what the public wants/ Is disasters…’)

In a hotly contested week – high fives  all round, but especially to Nicholas Hodgson, David Silverman, Sylvia Fairley, John O’Byrne, Richard Norman and Jane Blanchard – the winners, printed below, take £25.

Shoot me now, says Mariana,
Off me quickly, life’s a drag –
Love is constantly manãna,
All I do is lollygag –
I am emptied, I become null,
Suffer self-destructive feelings –
Sick of everything autumnal:
Leaves are coming through the ceiling.
See the mouse? I couldn’t care
If he is a dirty squeaker –
All that stained glass drives me spare.
No fiancé. I grow weaker.
She’s a misog – do avoid her!
Yes it’s true, my life is cack:
Do I not love to embroider?
Loathe it, babes! And oh my back!

Bill Greenwell/Millais’ ‘Mariana’

Here’s a tip: when supervising flocks,
Take time to trace the cut of an inscription.
Keep an eye out for the pirate fox,
But here you’ll find what’s needed: a depiction
Of what will get us all if you translate,
Of what will get us all no matter what.
We only have to hang around and wait.
It gets us going till we have been got.
You see the swooping hills, the tempting dells?
You see the rushing rills, the rural dance?
You see the luscious grass, the floral swells?
The sky so blue? The trees held in a trance?
   All this will fade away.