Set by J Seery

A commemorative plaque to Ted Hughes is to be placed in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey alongside Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, Shelley and Blake. We wondered how Mr Hughes would have expressed himself on his own plaque.

This week's winners

Well done. We were sorry to lose J Seery, but having set this particular competition he clearly had more thinking time than the rest of you, so was penalised. However, he can have an hon mensh for the lines:

What did Philip Larkin say of me? Who
knows? Who cares?
A plaque on all your poems!

This week's winners get £25 each. with the Tesco vouchers for added excellence going to Basil R-D.

The scratchy voices
I am the scratchy voice
Of the thorns and tough undergrowth
And the stripped branches
With their harsh claws.
I am the laureate
Annealed by disaster
Pockmarked with language and memory
And silence.
I am the stones of the scree
Where feet slither
I know why the blood and the marrow
Turn to a puddle of ice.
I am the mystic
The fabled designer of visions
What I croak or record is a recourse
For staying alive.
Basil Ransome-Davies

In this maddled light
All day in this maddled light
You scour our names. Your voices
Dawdle over blackened flags
Blazoned with masons' scripts.
Wind-light and river thrum under us. The loam
Heats beneath these scrubbed stones
Like oil in cauldrons, like the spittle shifting
On the tongue of the shaman.
My words are swallowed up
In this boiling shadow.
Under these slabs, embossed, grand as chieftains,
We labour away:
Umpteen of us, champing for air.
Badger, otter, buck, the itinerants
Of the wild, bursting field.
The tribe in its unstilled lust.
Bill Greenwell

The top of the tree
He sits at the top of the tree.
His grasp is enormous.
The lantern of his jaw, they say,
Weighs a good English pound;
It grinds smaller than the Almighty.
The iron bands in his skull
Hold huge horizons
In a relentless embrace,
And lurking in its depths
Living creatures stir and prowl.
This is no more a safe place.
Enclosed by marble furniture
He primes himself
To outface eternity.
Gerard Benson

The next challenge

No 4128 Set by J Seery

We all read about the Foreign Office having to issue an apology for a "foolish" document suggesting the Pope should open an abortion clinic, bless a gay marriage and launch a range of Benedict-branded condoms during his visit to Britain this year. The individual responsible, said the FCO, had been "transferred to other duties". What "suitable" itinerary would this person suggest for a visit by other public figures of note?

Max 125 words by 27 May
comp@newstatesman.co.uk