Honk If You Write Sestinas

The craze of poetry ‘bumper stickers’ (or similar items displayed in car rear windows) has surely reached its peak. On Friday last, the reverie I normally allow myself during the short car journey to a well-known purveyor of croissants (and much else besides) was spoilt by a cacophony of honking horns as fellow drivers sought to make public their passion for that most muddle-headed of forms, the Sestina. The noise of drivers drawing attention to themselves was such that I was unable to hear the frenzied yapping of the little puppy dog whose lead had inexplicably been caught in my near-side rear door and who had therefore been trotting along just behind my vehicle in some vexation. The journey was short and the puppy was not harmed, although I cannot say the same for myself. Before I had left the carpark at the Winson Green branch of Lidl with the…