Sunday 24 November 2013

The 2013 Beryl Bainbridge Poetry Competition


I still haven't managed to sleep right through the night without waking up at least once before dawn, and my tactic of running through the alphabet with place-names or such like has been replaced by listening to the radio through ear-pieces on my mobile phone.

Last night, an unpleasant dream involving anxiety about future work woke me up, and I plugged in the radio and bored myself back to sleep with the help of BBC Radio 4.

The trouble is that at some time in the middle of the night, Radio 4 turns into The World Service which - although a boon to captives tied to a radiator in a foreign land who are given a small transistor for good behaviour - does get a bit real at times, and I was re-awoken by a child soldier describing how he was forced to kill a fellow villager with a machete in front of his entire family. I can sleep through most things, but not these things.

So I yanked the earphones out and turned off the radio. Then - for some reason - I started to compose a poem using some disparate words which happened to pop into my restless head, and what I came up with is written below. This is as far as I got before laughing myself back to sleep, quietly chuckling away in the darkness, trying not to wake up H.I. next door. I often wake her up with snoring or loud farts, apparently. Ours is a compact but adorable city apartment, as I believe I have already said.

Ok, I know it is nowhere near up to the standard of Pam Ayres, but I think it has a certain merit. It being Sunday, when all the blog-poets have offered their wares to the world on Saturday night as the rest of us are trying to sleep, I am hoping that someone will take up the baton and complete it for me. I know it needs a bit of polishing before adding to, so don't worry about offending me with some heavy alterations and strike-throughs - I'm not precious. All the entries will be published, and the prize will go to the worst.


Beryl Bainbridge went to Cambridge
to visit some kith and kin.
But when she arrived, they were not there,
the fuckers were simply not in.

"Fucking Roger and fucking Iris!"
Beryl started to shout,
"If I ever see those fuckers again, 
I'm giving those fuckers a clout!"

"I even brought them a fucking cake!"
she bellowed out there on the street,
"It took me fucking ages to make!
It was good enough to eat!"

18 comments:

  1. Right ….. here's my entry { I think that I may have gone a bit limerick stylee though ! } Also, I go to Cambridge quite a lot and, for my delightful poem, you need to know that there's a man who sits in a waste paper bin playing guitar outside King's College :

    SO, I"M TAKING THE CAKE UP TO KING'S,
    FOR THE MAN WITH GUITAR IN THE BIN,
    HE'S THERE FOR THE TOURISTS,
    SO NEED'S SOMETHING MOREISH …
    ROGER and IRIS CAN GO F**K THEMSELVES !!

    I think that it has quite a pretty lilt to it, particularly the last line with it's change of pace !! I think that I might take up poetry as a hobby !! XXXX

    ReplyDelete
  2. Excellent. The last line sort of brings all together neatly.

    ReplyDelete
  3. (My version):

    Believe me, I'm not a Girl in a Polka-dot dress
    Other than she I hate this mess!
    I hate those crumbles,
    And this cake or this tart(e),
    which really fuckingly break my motherly heart.
    Weeping I call "Good Night, Children, Everywhere"
    and run like a hare
    till I reach the Bellt,
    I drink there like hell,
    till I forget about Aaron, Jojo and Rudi,
    that unthankful brood - i,
    (making me feel so foul-moody).
    I quench my emotional hell
    till they chuck me out of the door,
    where I finally fall asleep,
    - precisely at clock four.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hahaha, sorry: forgot to dot my i's and cross my t's...

    ReplyDelete
  5. 'But Iris and Rodger were trying to dodge her.
    And keeping their profile all low,
    They hid the gloom of their dark silent room
    Till the Old Bat decided to go'

    ReplyDelete
  6. I left out the word 'in' after 'hid' in the third line. Bogger that.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Allowances have been made buy the judging panel Molly, never fear.

      Delete
    2. Actually, I meant 'by', not 'buy', but Christmas is coming up and I am a little strapped at present.

      Delete
  7. Should I be fucking offended?!

    And who the hell is Roger? ;)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Beryl Bainbridge went to Cambridge
    To have some tea and cakes.
    She ordered a scone (scoane)
    and bit on a stone
    And now her tooth really fucking aches.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I know I said I didn't a bit of editing to the start of the original opus, but you seem to have torn it up and thrown it away completely, Cro.

      Delete
  9. So Beryl took her fucking cake
    And started to leave the village
    When a woman in a tizzie
    Having no dessert for her Mother-in-Law Lizzie
    Paid Beryl a fucking fortune
    For that dope filled, highly frosted
    Hunk of drugged up cake.

    ReplyDelete
  10. It's good enough to eat!

    What shall I do while I wait,
    to see if you return.
    And if you don't, soon come on home
    I'll eat this fucking cake, all alone.

    ReplyDelete