I’d like to thank the hundreds of you who sent in your poems for CIO‘s First Annual Poetry Prize. I’d really like to, that is, but since only about a dozen people bothered, I’m unable to do so. Furthermore, the quality of the entries was so dismal that it made me despair of this country once flush with literary lions but now appearing to be down to its last few rhymers.
I did quite like JK’s effort which wins third prize for this upbeat scheme:
You read an SLA Covered all the TLAs Told you it was all OK You’re the big shot CIO But then there came the big KO Turns out you were SOL
Pretty dodgy actually now I read it back and not nearly as good as Nancy Beergarden’s epic called Blue And White Collar. And even if it was, Nancy deserves something for having the greatest name ever. I most admired this lovely, dusty stanza with its echoes of Blind Lemon Jefferson and Robert Johnson.
If you’ve got the datacentre blues Nothing you can do Got to keep your thing moving on Ain’t no downtime when you’re gone
But the virtual laurels go to Axicom PR’s annoyingly good looking and well-read Nick Sutton:
If you could hear, at every jolt, the spin Come gargling from the besuited lungs, Obscene as ‘leverage’, rare as truth From press-trained drones and corporate tongues, My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To spokespeople hoping for a decent story, The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est Pro PR mori.
Lovely doff of the cap to Wilfred Owen, Nick: you win a fiver to spend in the pub of your choice. The other pair get some stuff that’s been lying under my desk for the last couple of years.
