Poetry Competition Adult Runner-Up If Shakespeare was Gibraltarian today

by Michael Nicholls

Shall I compare thee to wisdom in fools?
Lost as a tempest on midsummer's night,
Have we with Brussels? Will thou play by rules?
A treaty, a treaty, no dual or fist fight.

Much ado about Schengen a tale told,
The course of frontiers never did run smooth.
Beware boots on the ground lo and behold,
And wherefore art that mournful passport booth?

Et tu Britain thou cauldron of trouble,
Players on the stage of Brexit secession,
Thou hath caus’d us to boil and bubble.
To sign or not to sign that's the question.
Friends Gibraltarians lend me your ears,
A sonnet with words from those of Shakespeare's.

Judge’s Comment: Adult Runner-up
If Shakespeare was Gibraltarian Today
A clever poem that borrows well-known phrases from Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets to depict a snapshot of one aspect of Gibraltar’s political landscape at this moment in time. The use of Shakespeare’s sonnet form and iambic pentameter is in keeping with the theme and these choices allow the poem to gather momentum. I wonder whether, in true Shakespearean fashion, the break in iambic pentameter in lines mentioning “fight”, “Brexit” and how this has “caus’d us to boil and bubble” is intentional and meant to make the reader sit up and pay attention? The rhyming couplet urging us to listen to the speaker would make it seem so!