COMPETITION

Perverse

Jaspistos

In Competition No. 1460 you were in- vited to write a poem either in praise of something conventionally considered ugly or in dispraise of something conventionally considered beautiful.

Good news for the Mafia! From now on, outdistancing our rivals in generosity, we shall have a weekly prize-money kitty of roughly £75 to distribute. Usually it will be shared equally, as in the past, but I reserve the right in any week in which the top winner seems to me to leave the rest of the field well behind to reward that perform- ance with an extra helping of the cash available.

I suppose Stephen Spender's effort to love pylons is the best-known celebration of the 'ugly', though Browning, with his love of the grotesque, was the pioneer. But who was the first poet to knock a sunset? Don't write to tell me. There was a huge and enjoyable entry. Manful attempts were made to be rhapsodic about the revolting — a maggot farm, a baboon's bottom, a cauliflower ear, a fag-end, dentures in a glass (a near-success), vomit (a total fail- ure), Basingstoke and Slough. The alterna- tive approach was generally an attack on sacred cows of culture, that vache, the Mona Lisa, bearing the brunt, along with St Paul's, the Grecian Urn, Mozart's 29th Symphony, Beethoven's 9th and Tchaikovsky's 5th, Len Wellgerbil was horribly cruel about a mermaid:

See the ocean's spittling foam Wash across her midriff bulge. Who but Prufrock would indulge In fantasies of her at home?

and Katie Mallett was wittily bitchy about a flower: Go, ugly rose! Your fleshy petals press Into a flaccid cushion like a hat

Devised by some mad milliner to dress The wife of a low-ranking bureaucrat.

Commendations to T.A. Hunter, Ralph Sadler, John Sweetman, M.R. Macintyre and Noel Petty, twelve pounds each to the winners below, and the bonus bottle of gin, the gift of Mr Williar' Topham, to Mary Holtby.

Stupendous sow, superbly spread In undulant abandon, Though mud and straw compose your bed And you possess—so some have said— No dignity to stand on, Observing your maternal pose Unmoved by squeaks and wrigglings, The noble ears that drape your nose, The massive flank that proudly shows Its fringe of pendent piglings, I muse how poor a thing is grace Beside a bulk so spacious; Beauty is surely broad of base And generous bosoms claim their place Among the truly gracious. (Mary Holtby) I am a gondolier in venal Venice

Where all day long I push my solemn oar Around the stinking town — a dreary chore.

At night I go to Mestre and play tennis.

The tourists have their cameras to their eyes The moment they embark, home-movies roll, They gasp their way around the dismal hole Ecstatic even in the narrow sties.

The pigeon shit is getting out of hand, Pollution clogs the banks of the lagoon; This town — a rotten tooth in a spittoon Of warm bacteria — should be replanned.

A plague on all of it from the dogana Right to the railway station (which is fine)!

I know what I would do if it was mine:

I'd swap it for an over-ripe banana.

(Ginger Jelinek) Around Spaghetti Junction I and my dozy cruise.

Accord of form and 'function: We marvel, we enthuse.

Escher might have drawn it With wry, perverse intent: A deconstructed cornet, A loveknot in cement.

It ties up space in tangles, It makes the usual strange.

How intricate it dangles, Our gorgeous interchange!

(Basil Ransome-Davies) The countryside is a disgusting place - Not for the family — you cannot take A decent kid to look at it in case They find frogs spawning madly by the lake, Dragonflies screwing in the air above, Grey squirrels playing with their nuts up trees And everything four-footed making love.

The place is just a brothel for birds and bees.

Some humans even use it for their sex, Get gnat bites on their bums, grass everywhere, Crawl out of haystacks looking complete wrecks With all the evidence stuck in their hair.

The Vice Squad should move in and close it down, Concrete the woods and paint the grass dark brown. (Fiona Pitt-Kethley) When once at Oxford they conferred On Chaplin a degree, he Said in his speech of thanks a word Which much placebat mihi.

Said he, if it can stir the heart When sunlight shafts come down On dustbin lids, perhaps there's art In antics of a clown.

I reckon Chaplin got it right, No need for more explaining: My dustbin is a lovely sight — But less so when it's raining, (Peter Hadley) I marvel, when I see a rainbow's curve, At God's poor visual imagination!

What artist working now would have the nerve To splash this kind of hackneyed aberration Across the sky, without a by-your-leave?

The coloration's indiscriminate: Crude bands of basic, unmixed colour. We've Come quite a way since every graduate Of every third-rate art school in the land Thought artlessness was challenging and witty; Today such tired designs are firmly banned.

The pressing problems of the inner city Are absent from indulgent work like this, Schematic, sentimental, lacking grit!

It's pretty, yes, and natural, I guess - But as a work of art it's frankly shit. (Peter Norman)