Competition - Win vouchers to spend at any Tesco store

Competition No 3710

You were asked to send in sonnets that made sense whether read forwards or backwards.

Report by Ms de Meaner

Lots of first-timers this week: Ross Elliffe and Elisabeth Elliffe (from New Zealand), Peter Wyatt, Geoffrey Tapper, Pat Nichols, Ron Heard, Julia Cadman, Hanna Bjorknas, S Lea. Welcome. Peter Wyatt's hard work left me gasping (he did what we told him not to and got the words to read backwards as well as the lines). Here are two lines: "Still cities' trashmen their power abuse,/Will surely some day his laden bin refuse" read backwards as "Refuse Bin Laden his day. Some surely will/Abuse power; their men trash cities still." These were the best two, so you can appreciate how stretched the rest of the poem was. Still, a pat for the effort. Robin Oakley-Hill thought it was all just too easy. What he suggests is a sonnet to spring that, read backwards, is a sonnet to autumn. Hmmm. Hon menshes to G M Davis, Robin Oakley-Hill, Gerard Benson and Alanna Blake. The winners get £20. The vouchers go to Ian Birchall.

Perhaps a weekend course, or evening class?

I'd rather not be art's McGonagall.

I want to paint a likeness that'll pass.

This sketch? - oh hell, nothing like you at all.

I really want to start . . . and yet . . . and yet . . .

Technique's a bugger for an amateur.

I worry that the paper sags, too wet.

And should I add some flowers, or furniture?

Wild whorls, impasto-ed, show my love, your worth,

Capturing the pounding passions of my heart;

Vibrant with colour, Provence and red earth

Immortalised in oil; each brush stroke's art.

This New Year's resolution's all my plan,

To paint as great a work as Paul Cezanne.

D A Prince

Where once were lovers, rarely are there friends.

We now despise the things that we held dear.

So this, my love, is where our journey ends.

We are no longer what we were, I fear.

Of any pain, none's sharper than love lost.

The caring heart must needs be raw exposed.

When love's untrue, how terrible the cost!

When love was new, the risks were undisclosed.

Each soul evolves its individual need.

As many hearts, as many loves to give.

No one can tell where their own path may lead.

There is no rule by which we all must live.

This, every jilted lover longs to know.

When love has ended, where is there to go?

Peter Reeve

Unleashing fury on the tall twin towers,

The lethal planes erupted from the sky;

The city lived through cruel and bloody hours,

Now thousands more must face their time to die.

For harsh revenge he gave the fatal sign -

The leader in a deep and secret cave -

His father's son, and from a wealthy line,

Fine words he spoke to rally all the brave.

"Our God decrees this is the law of strife,

The innocent may die - but die they must;

We fight to save our precious way of life,

Our holy scriptures say this war is just."

The corpses lay strewn out across the sand,

The US bombers raped an Asian land.

Ian Birchall

Distance forever cancelled by my screen,

My virtual neighbours, coded, gaunt, hirsute,

Stumped limbs, a torn and almost empty boot,

Mud-spattered horrors, brutal and obscene.

My very eyes must surely be unclean?

I plunge diminished, passive, fettered, mute,

My fingers press the Toshiba remote

To try myself before a different scene.

Reflective calm, sound reason, common sense:

Within this brain alone my peace I find,

'Gainst realms where unenlightened people dwell

A private and impermeable defence.

I have the power to control my mind,

Self-immunised against my fellows' hell.

Pat Nichols

"Look here," I said, "are you that Martin Amis?"

He turned to me, and flashed his set of teeth.

"It doesn't matter, reader, what my name is;

The subtext is what counts: what's underneath."

His character lived backwards. He reversed.

He threw his guts up, ate no food himself.

The checkout girls were always reimbursed.

In supermarts, he restacked every shelf.

"It seems to me your man is getting younger;

Does he unshrivel? That is all I ask."

He smiled at me, the little scandalmonger,

Concealing feelings with his author's mask.

Time's Arrow, so he claimed, would pierce my heart.

I reached the end, which was of course the start.

Will Bellenger

No 3713 Set by George Cowley

Can we have an extract from Orwell's 2084.

Max 200 words by 17 January (to appear in issue of 28 January 2002) E-mail: comp@newstatesman.co.uk