Friday, August 03, 2007

Terry Lifts the Lid

The inaugural Wimbledon Book Festival has set a Writing Challenge:
Can you write a story in prose (fiction or non-fiction), poetry or graphic form, including this sentence?
“Terence had been confident of his hat selection.”

I've submitted a sort of nonsense poem "Terry Lifts the Lid", about a guy trying to decide what to put on his head, but I can't publish it here as it is embargoed until the competition.

It is written in something approaching rhyming heptameter couplets, though due to the buggeration factor of "Terence had been confident of his hat selection" only containing thirteen syllables I've thrown in the odd line without the unstressed part of an iamb. (Come to think of it there is also a couplet with fifteen syllables in each line which I added because I'm difficult.)

Rereading it this morning, I have also realised that my Terence may well be related to that of the Ginger Geezer's "Terry Keeps His Clips On", from the great "Teddy Boys Don't Knit".

Why don't you enter as well?

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