‘Today we have naming of tiers…’: poems about coronavirus messaging

In Competition No. 3172 you were invited to submit a poem about the government’s coronavirus messaging.

Many of you, nudged no doubt by the title of the challenge, went for Milne pastiche. Take a bow, Martin Brinkworth: ‘When R was 1/ It had just begun…’; Brian Murdoch: ‘Boris Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, when he became PM…; and Sylvia Fairley: ‘Hush! Hush! Whisper your fears,/ Boris Johnson is planning his tiers…’.

I also liked Emma Teichmann’s natty twist on ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’: ‘Rishi’s in the counting house/ Printing heaps of money,/ BoJo’s in the dog house —/ He’s no longer very funny…’ And Janine Beacham’s villanelle captured well the deadening circularity of it all.

The winners, printed below, are led by W.J. Webster, whose poem finishes with a nice Rumsfeldian flourish. They earn £30.

Behind all the figures that spoke from the stage Lay a wonderful wizardly all-knowing Sage:‘Beware!’ said its mouthpiece, with eyebrows like thunder,‘Stay two yards apart or you’ll be six feet under;And unless you’re prepared for a premature death,You must wash your hands spotless like Lady Macbeth.’But the virus, undaunted, rampaged with more vigour,And the list of its victims grew bigger and bigger.So, for fear of infernos like something from Dante,It was high time, the Sage thought, for upping the ante:This mantra said, ‘Stay home and lock down your quartersTo protect all the doctors and nurses and porters.’For a while this had worked but there then rose a doubt —Had a fire been stamped down but not really stamped out?But the Sage only uttered a sighed, ‘Told you so —Don’t think that you know what I know I don’t know.’ W.J. Webster

Bashful and Doc had a terrible shockWhen the Government’s rules were announced:With a limit of six they were now in a fix —One of the team must be bounced.Grumpy