A Portrait of Sherlock Holmes
Street lamps glimmer in the smoky night of Victorian London.
In a tall, dark house, a pipe smoulders on a mantlepiece and a violin leans against a wall echoing tunes played long ago.
A bloodhound lies by a crackling fire watching a fly, landing on a Venus fly-trap.
Like a fish swimming into the net.
Or an unsuspecting criminal, falling into the snare of a master detective.
By Kate Lines, age 12, who receives Penguin Modern Poets 1. Submitted by Mr C Yates of Maharishi School, Ormskirk, Lancashire, who receives the Poetry Society teachers’ newsletter, a quarterly bulletin which includes features on innovative approaches to poetry in the classroom. For Poetry Society events, ring 0171 240 4810.
I was much taken with Kate’s encapsulation of the great man and particularly like the combination of the crackling fire and the Venus fly-trap. That you’d be unlikely to find these things together doesn’t invalidate them as images; the Holmesian accoutrements are artfully deployed to paint the portrait.