For Competition 3457 you were invited to submit a weather forecast in verse.
There were nods to Shakespeare, Eliot, Hardy and MacNeice in a large, varied and accomplished entry. An honourable mention goes to John O’Byrne’s haiku:
Mother Nature cries
Stopping play at Wimbledon:
Not any one’s fault.
The entries printed below net their authors a £25 John Lewis voucher.
It’s no go the beach today, it’s no go the picnic:
There’s heavy rain from Kent to Wales and thunder storms in Whitwick.
You’ll need cagoules in Chichester and wellingtons in Dover
And Driza-Bones in Liverpool till this tornado’s over.
It’s no go the summer fete, it’s no go the barbie,
All you’ll get is the tea-tent drowned and a flood alert for Derby.
The M1’s disappeared in spray, brown fog is on the Mersey
And if you venture north of the Tyne you’ll need your thickest jersey.
It’s no go your social life, there’s nothing left to hope for.
All you have’s this blue-lit screen and a mobile phone to grope for,
The real world is washed away, the climate’s changed for ever
And no escaping this bare fact: we’re all in this together.
D.A. Prince
The forecast bodes more wind and rain,
Ay, wind and rain,
Where under leaden skies again
The frenzied stormbirds fly;
More drenching downpours lie in wait
With gloomy days as grey as slate
While folk abed bid fears abate,
Becalmed by ‘Sailing By.’
Yet, facing days more foul than fair,
More foul than fair,
We, armed with Hardy hearts, must bear
A spell devoid of cheer;
For long-term forecasts now suggest,
With pressure lowering in the West,
There’s little hope of being blessed
With days less dour and drear.
Alan Millard
In comforting, patrician tones
I shall predict the weather.
And folk will feel much less alone
Believing we, together,
Face futures of occluded skies
Or stark, cloudless forever.
My forecast is approximate,
There’s much margin for error
In maps and charts I shall create
But don’t determine whether
The doldrum or the storm prevails:
I’m smug in my endeavour.
Folk heed or not my forecasting
The weather does not follow.
The only truth in broadcasting?
I’ll try again tomorrow.
Adrian Fry
They’ll be blue skies over Dover and the Broads,
Over Edgbaston, and Wimbledon and Lords,
They’ll be sunshine on speech days,
And sports days and beach days,
And Regent Park thesps treading boards;
And the pigs – they’ll be swooping,
And looping the looping,
For rapturous sun-bathing hordes
And the rustics will be dancing in the clover,
Every ploughman, shepherd, dairymaid and drover,
For the rain will fall precisely,
When and where required, to nicely
Fill the reservoirs and duckponds, and moreover:
Satan and his crew infernal
Shall be shivering in thermals,
As hell will be entirely frozen over
Nick Syrett
Surprisingly, the forecast, just last Monday,
Was all about my many long-lost chums
At school back in the Forties: Malin, Lundy,
Cromarty, Fisher, Forth (from Rugby scrums),
FitzRoy, who claimed his name meant royal blood
(We pointed out it meant he was a bastard),
Fat ‘Snowball’ Wight, who caused the loos to flood,
Young Bailey, who would secretly get plastered.
I chuckled when they mentioned poor old Dogger,
Caught in flagrante with the school nurse, Shannon;
The head, ‘Ben’ Dover, flogged the filthy snogger,
Expelled him like a bullet from a cannon.
And Tyne, whose father ended on the scaffold;
We called him ‘Tyne the Knot’ – such callous kids!
But when they came to Faroes, I was baffled;
Surely they’re buried in the pyramids?
Brian Allgar
Just in; a storm front forecast,
Large hailstones, gales expected,
A funnel cloud looms westward,
Crop damage (huge) detected,
A supercell, a monster,
Prepare for loss of power,
Seek shelter from the deluge,
A savage, soaking shower,
Evacuate your homes now,
We’re facing mass destruction,
A twister twice the scale of
That Pompeiian eruption,
Update; it’s been downgraded,
The sun’s out, warmth divine,
Light breezes, perfect beach day,
Use sunscreen, folks. It’s fine.
Janine Beacham
No. 3460: As you liken it
You are invited to take as your first line ‘Shall I compare thee to a [fill in the space with trisyllable of your choice, which can be a single trisyllabic word or a three-syllable phrase] and continue for up to a further 15 lines. Please email entries to competition@spectator.co.uk by midday on 22 July.
The sad news has reached us that Chris O’Carroll, a regular winner in the Spectator competitions from across the pond, has died. In the words of his friend Robert Schechter (also a regular competition entrant): ‘He was a very funny and gifted poet, as he proved in your pages as well as his books and other publications.’ He will be very much missed.
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