Spectator competition winners: surreptitious sonnets

In Competition No. 3264, you were invited to submit a poem in response to the following journal entry by Wallace Stevens on 3 August 1906: ‘Engaged at the office all day on a sonnet – surreptitiously.’

For much of his life, the Pulitzer prize-winning Stevens was a vice-president at one of America’s leading insurance companies. He jotted down ideas for poems as he walked the two miles between his home and office in downtown Hartford – and evidently continued to work on them once he got there. But his efforts at surreptitiousness paid off. David Shields drew my attention to a remark by a colleague who expressed astonishment at learning of Stevens’s extracurricular activities: ‘Write poetry! Who, Wally?’

Entrants drew inspiration from Barrett Browning, Milton, Wordsworth, Keats and Larkin, among others. Commiserations go to a long list of unlucky losers: D.A. Prince, Mike Morrison, Bill Greenwell, Hugh King, Nicholas Lee, Janine Beacham, Katie Mallett, Frank Upton and Dorothy Pope, take a bow. The winners, printed below, are rewarded with £25 apiece; double-dactylic Alex Steelsmith leads the way.

“Cunningly, stunningly, 

Wallace the modernist 

Burnishes quatrains he 

Doesn’t disclose, 

Even while plumbing the 

Terminological 

Murk of indemnity 

Policy prose. 

 

Hearing him prate about 

Non-reimbursable 

Payments and claimants, you’d 

Never suppose 

Wallace, with stealth that is 

Mythopoetical, 

Underwrites sonnets right 

Under your nose. 

Alex Steelsmith

“When in my place of work the muse descends 

The urge to rhyme in sonnet form prevails, 

Yet each and every word I write depends 

Upon the subterfuge that it entails. 

While writing furtively I find a place 

To hide my clandestine activities, 

Composing in a spare deserted space 

Or lurking in the firm’s ‘facilities’. 

The verse, when finished, must remain concealed 

From prying eyes, and so I shall secrete it 

Within a site that cannot be revealed – 

Or memorise it, tear it up and eat it. 

      Though none now see my surreptitious sonnet, 

      Posterity will put its seal upon it. 

Sylvia Fairley

“Beside me as I write, the globe-eyed toad 

Unnervingly observes my dereliction, 

Reminding me that I have breached the code 

That separates the dues of life from fiction: 

I’m spending office time on writing verse 

Whose volume will be slim and pickings slimmer: 

The wish to make a name becomes a curse, 

Pursuit of a mirage, a glowworm’s glimmer. 

Best see the job, toad says, as useful cog 

That meshes with the whole world’s working wheel; 

And time will always be life’s analogue, 

There freely to allot but not to steal. 

      It is a petty theft, no more, no less, 

      A sin that in this sonnet I confess. 

W.J. Webster

“My iambs I am scanning on the sly. 

My rhymes likewise are hush-hush stuff today. 

Covertly I lay life’s dull duties by, 

Feign office work, invite my Muse to play. 

The papers on my desktop, job-related, 

Are camouflage. I’m using them to hide 

The secret lines to which I’ve dedicated 

This furtive creativity joyride. 

 

So many occupations don’t allow 

Such disengagement from the daily grind. 

White-collar privilege, don’t fail me now 

As I neglect the tasks I’ve been assigned. 

If I worked in a mine or factory, 

I might not have this opportunity. 

Chris O’Carroll

“Earth has not anything to show more dull – 

The deadliest of meetings known to man, 

A tedious vexation to the soul: 

The Departmental Draft Strategic Plan! 

SWOTs, targets, key stakeholders, KPIs – 

I hide behind my graphs, thought-shower you. 

While managers drill down and synergise, 

I’m scoping your sweet eyes and think sky-blue. 

Beneath my minutes, budgets and agenda 

I reach out and I touch base with your heart. 

You had me at hello and I surrender – 

My key strategic mission statement’s SMART: 

Achievable: you’re my key take-away; 

Specific, timed: be mine by close of play! 

David Silverman

“‘Dear Mr Brown, it seems that your account 

Regrettably is in arrears again, 

So please send us a cheque for the amount,’ 

And let me work on my second quatrain. 

‘The district manager would like to see 

You upstairs in his office right away.’ 

I bet he’s going to have a go at me! 

You can’t compare him to a summer’s day! 

No, he’s the winter of our discontent. 

‘Your quarterly reports were not on time.’ 

He’s no idea how many hours I’ve spent 

Trying to find a decent final rhyme. 

How can I work, touched by the Muse’s kiss? 

Hell, for a game of soldiers bugger this! 

Brian Murdoch

No. 3267: do the business

The IBM corporate songbook of the 1930s, The Songs of The IBM, had a song in praise of its vice-president. You are invited to submit a song from the songbook of one of today’s corporate giants. Please email entries of up to 16 lines to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 14 September.