Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: Twists on Keats

The latest challenge asked for a sonnet that takes as its opening line Keats’s ‘Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell:’ (This was a sonnet Keats chose not to publish but transcribed into a long letter he wrote over a period in early 1819 to George and Georgiana Keats, his brother and sister-in-law.) The invitation drew a pleasingly large, inventive and witty entry which saw you deploy a range of sonnet patterns (there are some 30 variations of the form in The Oxford Book of English Verse). In an especially closely contested week, Julia Munrow, J. Garth Taylor, Chris O’Carroll, Susan McLean, Virginia Price Evans, Paul Freeman, Alanna Blake, Roger Rengold and Mike Morrison earn a special mention. And it was with regret that I disqualified W.J. Webster on account of an uncharacteristic slip. (His otherwise excellent entry began, ‘Why did I laugh last night…’.) The prizewinners, printed below, are rewarded with a well deserved £25 apiece and the bonus fiver belongs to John Whitworth.

John Whitworth Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell. Too long we’ve journeyed, sifting, drifting       through The eddies of the seriously unwell, To the wide river rolling, rolling to

The wide blue sea. Our life, dear friends is sad, As anyone with eyes to see, can see, Alas! Our world is going to the bad, No joyous shot at how things ought to be,

Sun on the water and a sky so blue, Trees on a shoreline, mountains in a mist, Scatheless, transcendent, overarching, true. O wandering poet, lonesome and unkissed,

You’ve drifted much too long and far too far. It isn’t what you do, it’s what you are.

Basil Ransome-Davies Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell. No records, clues or witnesses remain, Only a poisoned candle’s fading smell.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in