The newest competitors requested for poems that includes one in every of T.S. Eliot’s sensible cats attending to grips with the fashionable world.
The newest competitors requested for poems that includes one in every of T.S. Eliot’s sensible cats attending to grips with the fashionable world.
Your 21st-century reincarnations of Eliot’s felines (the poems had been initially revealed in 1939 and impressed by the poet’s four-year-old godson, who invented the phrases ‘pollicle’ for canines and ‘jellicle’ for cats) had been terrific, making it particularly troublesome to resolve on the winners. Some effective Macavitys narrowly missed the minimize (take a bow, Nick Syrett, David Shields and Hamish Wilson), as did Invoice Greenwell’s Jellicles and Brian Allgar’s Growltiger, the Tory Cat.
This week’s prime cats are printed under and pocket £35 every.
Sylvia Fairley
Bustopher Jones has agency flesh on his bones,
In brief, he has ceased to be fats,
He had a rebirth and he’s saving the earth,
He’s a Vegan Society cat.
And that is the explanation, when sport is in season,
He turns his impeccable again,
And the merest glimpse of these winkles and
shrimps
Makes him yearn for a plant-based fast snack.
As an alternative of pigs’ cheeks, he eats chickpeas and
leeks,
Or a spinach and kale cassoulet.
If it’s rising, he’ll strive it; he finds on this eating regimen
The kilos simply maintain falling away.
Strolling out, slim and svelte, he should tighten his
belt,
Or his trousers, well-cut, would possibly descend.
But it’s mentioned, now he’s lean, that it’s cool to be
inexperienced
And that sporting white spats is on-trend!
Chris O’Carroll
From a protracted line of troupers, our Gus got here of age
Amongst mentors and fashions whose lives on the
stage
Took without any consideration that everybody is aware of it’s all proper
To solid a black function with an actor who’s white.
An Othello’s corked face and his kinky-hair wig
Have been perceived not as hate crimes — simply par for
the gig,
And a cat, like his human co-stars, may be happy
To imagine any color he wished to be.
However at the moment, if a cat wears a blue-lens disguise
For a activate the stage with fake Siamese eyes,
Or dares to say dye to a pure follicle,
He’s positive to the touch off storms of rage diabolical.
If he dons additional fur to go Maine Coon or Persian,
Indignant critics will launch a barrage of aspersion.
So if all of that stuff is off limits, thinks Gus,
Then how come human beings get to decorate up like
us?
Nick MacKinnon
Growltiger is a Boho Cat who gentrifies the slums:
he’s dwelling on a Dutch barge with some
floorboard-sanding friends.
From Peckham Rye to Hoxton he’s creating
the stews,
rejoicing in his title as ‘The Doer-up of Mews’.
The cottagers of Rotherhithe know one thing of
his crimes:
a pop-up restaurant seems that’s large on kaffir
limes;
kombucha within the greasy spoon, some tofu on the
pub,
then there’s no extra work for strippers down the
Deptford Social Membership.
Within the forepeak of his vessel Growltiger sits alone.
He’s prowling over rooftops by way of a digital camera on his
drone
as priced-out cockney dockers achieve a foothold on
the barge,
obliged to dwell in Luton after they lengthy to dwell it
giant.
The working class press ahead in displaced rank
on rank;
Growltiger to his huge shock is made to stroll the
plank.
The Isle of Canines rejoices after they hear it on the
information,
whereas the workers of Wapping Waitrose weep in
crematorium pews.
Basil Ransome-Davies
Life had posed a fateful query to the Woman
Griddlebone.
The tragic demise of Growltiger had left her fairly
alone.
Would she discover her Mr Darcy, as in all the perfect
romcoms,
Or dwell an unprotected queen, the prey of feral
toms?
The primary few weeks had been powerful as hell. She hung
out by the docks,
A teat of her survival expertise, a university of exhausting
knocks.
The native males all tried it on. She bid them go to
hell.
Macavity got here sniffing spherical. She brushed him
off as nicely.
Some cats are fats and lazy; not so Woman
Griddlebone.
You may name her too intense, however she was all the time
within the zone.
She shaped a gaggle of feminine cats to busk round
St Paul’s
For vacationers who applauded their melodic
caterwauls.
Although she did it for morale’s sake, for a booster,
for a gasoline,
As selfies taken with the group popped up on-line
en masse
Their fanbase swelled to thousands and thousands. They had been quickly
dwelling the dream.
Who wants Fitzwilliam Darcy when your act’s a
viral meme?
To mark the 70th anniversary of George Orwell’s demise, your subsequent problem is to submit a brief story with an Orwellian flavour. Please e-mail entries of as much as 150 phrases to [email protected] by noon on 19…
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