Wordsworth

Gabe Atkinson

This week, we invited readers to submit a clerihew about a criminal or otherwise notorious person.

Whakatane’s Win Lunt writes: Attila the Hun/ Took his men for some fun./ Then they stopped to sack Rome/While travelling home.

Atholea Shanks of Oamaru: Phillip John Smith (once Traynor)/Found fleeing to Chile a no-brainer./Corrections had him extradited/And claimed that they were delighted.

Tim Marshall of Oxford, Canterbury: The merits of Nero/Were practically zero./ Even his fiddling/Was no better than middling. John Mills of Gebbies Valley: The President/Is resident/Until convicted/ And evicted.

From Helen Yuretich In Te Ahu, which/Is a centre for hire/In Kaitaia: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid/ Sometimes hid/In the Hole in the Wall/ Till they died in a brawl.

Paul Kelly of Palmerston North: Pretty Boy Floyd/Got his name when employed/Out in an oil field, jobbing./ And later became famous for robbing.

Waikawa’s Nozz Fletcher: Stephen K Bannon/Is an ultra-right loose cannon./ Despite mutual admiration, Trump did the firing/ Thus ending his hubristic aspiring.

An offbeat entry by Yvonne Moosberger of Hamilton takes the prize: Nadzeya Ostapchuk,/Olympic shot-put drug crook,/Swapped new sample for old,/Won the gold.

The next contest was inspired by Helen Yuretich’s entry: send us a brief, four-line poem describing some of the benefits or drawbacks of your local area. Entries, for the prize below, close at noon on Thursday, February 22.