May 11, 2020
WINNING SGCNZ SHAKES QUOTES SONNETS
(SGCNZ’s Locked-down Competition ~ Round B)
Shakespeare wrote so many quotable quotes! Those who do not ‘brush’ with Shakespeare, miss out on appreciating how many everyday sayings, phrases, words are either directly from the Bard’s works, or parody them. No one could deny we are now “in our Autumn of discontent”.
The third of Shakespeare Globe Centre New Zealand’s Sonnet competitions has produced two very close winners with the subject of choosing any two of Shakespeare’s ‘quotable quotes’ or phrases and weaving them into a Sonnet.
1st Prize
Covid Sonnet 19
– by Lesley Shepherd of Auckland
Shall I compare thee to a beast of prey?
Thou art more cunning and more terrible.
Rough times do shake our weary world each day
And we must fight to gain a life more bearable.
Sometime too strong the monster greedily feeds
And oft its venom’d claws they grip so tight,
And though hearts tremble as our world bleeds
By every way we must combat this blight.
But this black plague, this curse, it too will fade
And lose dominion over places it grow’st.
Nor shall death brag we wandr’st in his shade,
When our firm minds heed the science we know’st.
So long as we remain in space apart
So long will we together all take heart.
2nd Prize
Seclusion exclusions – a Lockdown Level 4 sonnet
– by John Smythe of Wellington
I have been studying how I may compare
This lockdown where I live unto the world
But you and all my friends are lock’d elsewhere
And I am left in foetal self-love curl’d.
Now I am alone. Is it not monstrous
One small virus brings the world to this?
The media’s made us all so hyper conscious:
’Tis wrong to hug and even more to kiss.
No more may I buy with you, sell
With you, talk with you, walk with you.
No bubble holds us in its global shell
I walk alone around the block. Woohoo.
And yet in sky so blue, in air so clear
Ne’er was birdsong such a joy to hear.
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