[John Whitworth]

Competition Number 4163 in The New Statesman asks for verses of up to sixteen lines which are replies by animals to poems addressed to them, e.g. Blake's Tyger or (I presume; they don't mention it) Burns's Mouse. By the 3rd of February to comp@newstatesman.co.uk

[John Whitworth]

And here's a draft anyway, of a poem in Scots. I hope it's not too hard for anyone. A moose is a mouse, not a thing with horns. We don't have them in Ayrshire.


Tae a Poet

Big-bottomed, blustering, lumpen lummox,
Wha eats enough tae fill twa stomachs,
And flattens a’ the humps and hummocks
You chance tae see,
Your poetry’s enough tae flummox
The likes o’ me.

You say that mice an’ men together
With every sort of fur and feather
Can change the world and change the weather –
Is that your art?
I call it high-falutin’ blether.
Not worth a fart.

An’ if you want an end to strife
‘Twixt man an’ moose,
Get oot ma field, get oot ma life,
Get oot ma hoose.

[Roger Slater]

That's great, John, enough to make my quick effort seem extra lame, but here goes:

To William

No one 'framed my symmetry'
And no one made the Lamb or me.
No furnace ever held my brain.
There was no hammer, was no chain.
Your catalog of lies continues:
No artful shoulder touched my sinews.
But most of all, no hand or eye
Has ever spelled my name with Y.

[Ann Drysdale]

Hey - all those who bombed in the Speccie "backchat" comp can recycle their nightingales and cuckoos here!

[Roger Slater]

I was thinking that, too. With any luck, the Oldie will run a similar competition and I can have poems that lose in three separate magazine comps. That's the gold standard of losing!

[John Whitworth]

Roger, I think that's very neat. What occurred to Ann occurred to me also. I have a cuckoo somewhere.

[Gail White]

By the way, did we ever get an outcome on that competition for a reply from God to a prominent atheist?

[John Whitworth]

If it was a Staggers one then none of us won. Was it?

[Roger Slater]

I think this was it: http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showth...hlight=atheist

I'd forgotten all about it, but the media hasn't called asking me to comment on my win.

[Jerome Betts]

Er . . . keen as I am on recycling don't the rubrics mention replies by animals and give the example of Blake's tiger? I know, in a way, birds are part of the animal kingdom but probably the NS setters keep an eye on the competition so . . . possibly they specified animals to insulate it from the nightingale and cuckoo one and prevent reuse of unplaced entries?