One of Harry Flynn’s jobs in Kate Atkinson’s Our Noble Selves is to write the preface to an anthology of poems resulting from the Festival of Britain poetry competition. He finds the task dispiriting, and Atkinson has some fun at the expense of the quality of the poems submitted.
This was a job actually undertaken by John Hayward, and the resulting Penguin anthology was published in 1951.
I wanted to find out who had won the competition and whether the book was available to read online. It isn’t, but some of the winning poems are. Following that trail led me to G. S. Fraser’s Poetry Now (1956), where I discovered this delight by Elizabeth Jennings.
It’s not quite the beginning of autumn, but…
The poem is from G.S. Fraser: Poetry Now (1956)
The background of the featured image is from Colors and textures of early fall from Cats In Cambridge.
The photo of Elizabeth Jennings is from The Tablet