Quiz Night

It was Quiz Night at Portsmouth Poetry Society this evening.  I was Bamber Gascoigne.

You can never tell how such things will go down but it went not badly at all. Answers another time.

Hidden Melodies 

Well-known songs disguised in the style of famous poets.

One point for the song, which are mostly nursery rhymes, and one point for the poet.

1.

They ascended the upward trail,

They did not mean to but they did, 

Then lost the contents of their pail. 

Such misadventure. Silly kids.

2.

An oval man sat on a fence  

Precariously 

And hit the ground 

injuriously

Not from jumping

But from falling.

3. 

Another year closer to death, 

The scavenger croaked, 

And gorged on a piece of cake. 

Let’s celebrate.

4.

If we had long enough, awkward lady, 

I’d ask about your horticulture, maybe, 

And in your demure, leisurely way 

You could at length describe how it looked gay, 

Blossoming with tintinnabulations 

Of pewter, conches and ranks of beauties.

5.

You and your royal routines 

- after you’ve defied the smoking ban 

And had your Corn Flakes,

It’s a String Quartet with your musical friends. 

Still, it keeps you happy, I suppose. 

What Forms of Poem are these,

6. 

Only seventeen 

Syllables, hardly enough 

To say very much

7.

 
One of these 

If you please 

Rhymed AABB 

Like this, you see

8. 

A poem that’s made of five lines 

That tries its best to make rhymes 

The first two end words, 

The fourth with the third, 

It must be like that every time.

Cryptic Poets, 

9. Peter Pan’s companion, manage

10. George and Louis’s sister and a cat’s noise

11. A cartoon bear and a stream

12. Fourth gospel author swindled

13. Old Testament priest and British currency

14. Two queens and a senior clergy person

15. King of Macedonia and a pontiff 

Poetry Arithmetic, 

 
16. Lines in a sonnet x lines in a couplet

17. Eliot’s Quartets divided by lines in a quatrain

18. Beats in a line of pentameter x A.A. Milne’s Now We Are…

19. The year Shakespeare died minus the number of sonnets he wrote

20. How many years the Poet Laureate currently serves plus how many years Portsmouth Poetry Society has been going.