[UK-CONTEST] BERU poetry

[Gerry Lynch]

Ian White GM3SEK wrote:
> Gerry Lynch wrote:
>   
>> BERU (the second best contest of the year, after WWCW) is nearly upon 
>> us again, and to get you in the mood, I thought I'd dust off some BERU 
>> poetry I penned after last year's contest. A free pint goes to the 
>> first person who spots which poem I nicked the scansion from.
>>
>> Yes, I am mad.
>>     
>
> There's a green-eyed yellow idol
> In the north of 9N2...
>
>   
Admittedly, Thunderbird eating up the line-breaks doesn't help, but it 
is nothing like either Cargoes/Coaster or Sea Feaver by Masefield ("I 
must go down to the shack again, to the shack and a lonely band..."), 
nor The Raven, nor any bit of Hiawatha I've ever read (although I 
haven't read all of it - it's loooong).  It is Betjeman (but I think 
Frank guessed that because he knows I'm a Betjeman fan) but it's not 
Myfanwy nor does it scan very much like Myfanwy.  There should be stanza 
breaks at the end of every fourth line, and the poem is not an 
especially famous one. 

However (and I've asked this before, but no-one knew) Ian's post 
reminded me of a spoof of The Green Eye of the Yellow God that appeared 
in RadCom sometime shortly before I was licensed - I'd guess 1990-1.  It 
went something like "There's a broken legged rhombic to the north of 
Kathmandu/there's a yagi up a pole above the town".  I'd dearly love to 
get a hold of it.

I did one for the K9YA Telegraph which was a rip off of one of the great 
American patriotic poems, Walt Whitman's "O Captain, My Captain", and I 
got an e-mail from a Dubya bemoaning that because his countrymen were 
all so ill educated, they'd never know I'd used the scansion in that 
great British poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (I didn't; it's 
totally different).

One of the things that gets me about contesting is that while it's very 
dramatic when you're taking part in it, it isn't exactly one of the 
world's great spectator sports, and it's very different to convey the 
excitement of contesting in writing.  I've read various bits of (very 
short) contesting fiction and none of them to my memory have ever 
captured the excitement.  The nearest I've come across is K5ZD's long 
story writeups he used to do.  Maybe contesting needs some good sports 
reporters?  ...or poets?

73

Gerry GI0RTN