The newest problem invited you so as to add to Sam Leith’s lines about Boris Johnson, written within the metre of Longfellow’s ‘The Music of Hiawa
The newest problem invited you so as to add to Sam Leith’s lines about Boris Johnson, written within the metre of Longfellow’s ‘The Music of Hiawatha’: ‘Mayor of London Boris Johnson/ A lot admired the woman’s pole-dance/ Mentored effectively her start-up enterprise…’
Although Longfellow has lengthy fallen out of style, in his day he was a poet celeb, imitated by Baudelaire, parodied by Lewis Carroll and outselling Browning and Tennyson (he was additionally the primary American to be honoured with a marble bust in Poet’s Nook at Westminster Abbey). The poet J.D. McClatchy, writing within the New York Occasions, famous that on Lengthy-fellow’s 70th birthday it was proclaimed that ‘there isn’t a man residing for whom there’s so common a sense of affection and gratitude, and no man who ever wore so nice a fame so getly and easily’.
What we’ll all be saying about Boris when he hits 70 stays to be seen however within the mean-time, listed below are some reflections, in your greatest trochaic tetrameter, on how he’s doing to date. The winners earn £25.
Basil Ransome-Davies
It was Boris’s charisma,
His sulphuric look of energy
Taking pictures from demented eyeballs,
That dissolved elastic waistbands
In so many women’ knickers,
Brought on the strongest ones to perish —
Perish just like the stricken bison!
Adopted by their different clothes,
Shed like falling leaves in autumn,
Overcome by Bojo’s mojo,
Thus he additionally conquered Corbyn,
Feeble relic of Outdated Labour,
And his creepy gang of cohorts
Within the common election,
Arming him to guide his nation
To the desert of its future.
Invoice Greenwell
Now canoodling along with his public,
Tempting them as King Farouk did,
Boris flashed his highly regarded pants,
Pink and floral, from Hawaii,
Burning k-cals by the hour
Although he dashed in direction of his breakfast;
As the women gushed his praises,
So he held aloft his bacon,
Bacon which was mushy and salty,
Bacon wealthy in pollster protein,
Favoured excessive by Sur-Jawn-Kurtis,
Statistician whom he worshipped,
By no means dreaming Mikigovas
Took his tomahawk to practise,
Took it to his wigwam nightly,
Gazing at his personal reflections…
Brian Murdoch
Boris had a thoughts to journey
Far throughout the big-sea-water,
To the Mighty Chief, the Donald,
However he discovered him within the jail,
Locked up within the jail, the Cho-Key,
For the reason that warpath, the Im-Peach-Ment.
Sadly he returned to London
To his wigwam at Ten-Dow-Ning,
However he discovered the front-door bolted,
Discovered the keys now not working,
Discovered his clothes in a bundle
Manufactured from plastic, known as the Bin-Bag,
Mendacity on the chilly pavement,
With a be aware from new squaw Kar-ri,
Who had talked with the pole dancer,
Mentioned that he should depart the tepee,
Go and transfer in with Prince Andrew…
Nick Hodgson
Swiftly he declared his curiosity
For this little one of the Arcuri,
(Blonde she was, which happy him significantly);
Selected her for a international mission,
Selected her as a enterprise envoy —
Extra enticing than Prince Andrew.
Got here the media asking questions;
Although unanswered went her telephone calls,
Her admirer she defended:
‘He’s a man you need to hold with;
He’s a man to guide his nation’;
But regardless of all of the questions,
Not confirming or denying
What’s of curiosity to the general public:
(By no means thoughts the general public curiosity)
Did they ….? (select your euphemism).
Chris O’Carroll
What flamboyant Boris dancing
Did he do to entertain her?
Did he, polewise, gyrate for her?
Did she then return the favour?
Or was all the general public cash
In her purse laborious gained by advantage?
Can one belief his statements thereon?
Talking true is only one choice,
Usually not the PM’s first alternative,
So the general public feels entitled
To low cost the way in which he spins it
When he touches on the spinning
And the opposite acrobatics
That will not or could have occurred
When he visited her flat and
They bought strictly right down to enterprise.
Nick MacKinnon
Boris Johnson rode a zipwire
from the height of his Olympics,
crossed the River Thames at Greenwich
in an Emirati podule,
noticed the bridgeless hole at Temple,
spanned it with Joanna’s backyard,
grabbed a BorisBike at Woolwich,
rode it via the virgin tunnel
bored by engineers at Crossrail
to the ditch he’d dug at Heathrow
the place he rammed a giant bulldozer
with a moth-balled water-cannon,
hopped aboard a brand new Routemaster,
flashed a smile on the conductor,
requested her if she’d blip his Oyster,
questioned if she fancied transport.
There are various memorable meals in literature. Your subsequent problem is to offer a passage about meals written within the fashion of a well known writer. Please e mail entries of as much as 150 phrases/16 traces to [email protected] by noon on 22 January.