The En Avant Business Fun Poetry Competition
Right, the time has come for you lot to demonstrate your grasp of business, language and humour. Today I invite entries for the En Avant Business Fun Poetry Competition.
As well as a supreme winner, and depending on how many entries we get, we may have category prizes for best sonnet, best haiku, best modern style, best classical style, best limerick, etc. Style, use of language, and originality will all count, but especially humour and wit. Original compositions only, please, although good doggerel and bastardisation of renowned poetry and poetic prose is encouraged.
To inspire you, look at Capital Chronicle’s adaptation of the Shakespearean sonnet to poke fun at the US sub-prime debt issue. (RJHA - I take it you wouldn’t be averse to a drop of NZ Pinot Noir in recompense for stealing your idea?). Update: Also check Madeline Kane’s limerick ‘Pity the poor lawyer‘.
Entries can be posted as comments below, before 11.59pm, Friday evening, 17 August (update) 11pm Sunday, 12 August, NZ time. This is a friendly business blog, so anything too offensive or wildly off-topic may be moderated out. As usual, I am sole judge and arbiter (until I find someone to share the joy with me) , I (we) can be suborned, and the usual cheapskate prize is the acclamation of the blog-reading public, and maybe a drink if I’m in the same part of the planet as you some time soon - I do travel a bit.
Release your secret inner bard!
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July 31st, 2007 at 7:06 pm
Hi Jim.
I am glad someone had a laugh with it (sometimes a step back from the serious is useful) - especially if the theft is smoothed with talk of NZ pinot noir.
Have been wanting to do something similar involving a bottle prize on the site but motivation somewhat lacking during the hols!
Regards,
Rawdon
August 1st, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Thanks for the mention and good luck with your contest!
Running a poetry contest can be a fun challenge. I hold limerick writing contests at my site every month or two and my most recent was a money limerick contest:
http://www.madkane.com/humor_blog/2007/06/28/money-limerick-contest-results-and-the-winners-are/ . Hmmm, come to think of it, I’d better run another soon or I won’t hear the last of it.
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:08 am
[…] (and viewing) pleasure: * Blog Carnival For Game Designers * Business Communications Carnival * Jim Donovan’s Hosting a Fun Poetry CompetitionTechnorati Tags: Five-Second Rule, Food rules, Science Humor, Scientists, Scientific Studies, […]
August 2nd, 2007 at 7:33 pm
With heartfelt apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge - suffice it to say I’m not on nearly the number of drugs he was….
In board room did CEO attune,
And telco assurance thence declare,
Where profit, the sacred measure, to man,
Through anti-competitive measures beyond compare,
Down to monopolies should be.
So hark! That mighty CEO declared
No government or commission could be dared
To regulate the glorious, the ceaseless beast
Where dividends great, and fortunes grand
And vested interests since all time
Were protected in ivory towers.
But oh! That confident romantic dream which existed
In the deep cavernous boardrooms of their souls!
A savage place? Once holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a NZX rating was haunted
By a woman wailing for an exit payment
And from this point, with US trips aplenty
As if the ship had already sunken and away
A mighty board suddenly was forced
Amid howls of derision from the industry
Huge changes would be wrought
Unbundling beneath the telecommunications Minster’s flail
And amid these tumultuous changes for all time
It flung up once a sacred concept
Naked DSL through the many miles the business ran
Through wood, dale and CBD
Then reaching those caverns measureless to man
Yes – even the competitors could compete equally!
And ‘mid this tumult Teresa heard from afar
The days were numbers, it ‘twas like was like war!
The shadow of the hallowed halls
Floated midway on the credibility rankings;
Where was heard the complaints from competitors
From the ISP’s and the Telco’s.
It was a miracle of rare electronic device,
A sunny Paul Reynolds hence from BT would slice !
A bloke with a history
In a vision once I saw:
It was a country with backbone galore,
And on broadband we did all transact,
Singing of Bell and Berners-Lee.
Could they revive within it
The symphony that was the P&T,
To such a deep delight ‘twould win the institutionals,
That with iTunes music loud and long,
They would build that infrastructure,
That fibre! those exchanges and VOIP services!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His wavy hair, his Scottish accent
Let the proof be in the pudding,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
Less the Telecom of old,
Return again to monopolise our souls.
August 2nd, 2007 at 8:02 pm
And this time with apologies to WS. I’m not sure he was on drugs, but I’ve lived in London and I suspect it would help in surviving there. And in his day they didn’t even have the tube!
To list, or not to list—that is the question:
Whether ‘tis more intune with the plan to suffer
The cashflow holes and crises of organic growth
Or to embark upon an IPO against all the growth troubles
And by solving those problems, end them. To list, to grow-
No more – and all at once we end
The stress and the thousand worries formerly suffered
That private enterprise is heir to. ‘Tis an end game
By many the ideal exit. To list, to grow—
To grow—but what of control and reporting? Ay there’s the rub,
For in that state of listing, what reporting will be required
When we have foregone the autonomy of private ownership.
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes stress of private ownership.
For who could bear the whips and scorns of compliance, cashflow and growth,
Th’ pundits erred, the independent man is correct
The pangs of needed cash, the employment law’s delay,
The insolence of government offices, and the spurns of the banks
That patient merit of th’ unlisted takes,
When he himself might his own ticker code make
With a prospectus? Who would pay the listing costs?,
To stress and strain with limited resource,
But that the dread of the realities of being listed,
The undiscovered AGM’s, from whose bourne
Bruce Sheppard and his funny hats, calls for new independent directors
And makes us rather bear the ignominy of the status quo
Than fly to lands we know not of?
Thus reticence does make cowards of us all,
And thus the resolve to list
Is is swept under the mat in the cold hard light of day,
And enterprise of great potential and opportunity
With this regard their potential not yet realised
And lose the ticker code they’d chosen. – Continue you now,
The fair Forsyth Barr! — Nymph, work in thy offices
Be all my annual reports remembered.
August 2nd, 2007 at 9:51 pm
There once was a man called Jim
Whose address book was looking quite slim
He called out for prose
For maybe amongst those
Would be someone who’d drink with him
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:14 pm
For Rod, for Michael, for Jim and for Ben
The internet gives voice where once there was pen
For business, New Zealand and our sense of unity
The internet puts us in the global community
But sadly for Ben, Michael, Jim and Rod
The telcos we depend on are playing God
They won’t share, they lie, and they cost way too much
The internet we have is like using a crutch
Our connectivity ebbs and it flows
More ebbing than flowing it seems, when it goes
So for New Zealand business and the boys that play in it
We’re stuck here downunder and our internet is shit
August 3rd, 2007 at 11:58 am
Ha ha ha ha ah, Brenda #2 and I am stunned by the time Ben has on his hands
… unless the following smut ridden attempt appeals to the coarser side of Jim
“The Rage Of The Masses” by MiramarMike, aged 40 1/2
There’s been leaders a-plenty with visions galore
I’ve seen IT Departments with geeks, technology and more
Yet rarely have I experienced, with heavy heart I tell you,
The happy marriage of 1 with 2
August 3rd, 2007 at 1:21 pm
Flog shares with burgers
And create a new empire
But alas, too few!
August 3rd, 2007 at 2:10 pm
But I’ve always had a soft spot for Othello…..
TUANZ, content you;
We humour them to serve our turn upon them:
We cannot all be monopolies, nor all monopolies
Cannot be fore’er lasting. You shall post
Many an obsequious and hand wringing commentator,
That, doting on his own corporate sponsored lunches
Wears out his credibility, much like the corporate’s CEO,
For nought but a few glasses of Pinot, and when he’s overlooked, replaced:
Whip me such transparent consultants. Others there are
Who, trimm’d in corporate speak and nuances of vested interests,
Keep yet their share portfolio’s attending on themselves,
And emailing prodigious reports of their worth to their bosses,
Profit mightily from their share price ascension and when they have purchased
Their Brioni suit
Preen themselves on Lambton Quay: these corporate types have some call;
And perhaps my core competencies reside elsewhere, For, sir
It is as undoubted that unbundling will occur,
Were I the CEO, I would not make claims of Governmental sensibility:
In regulating with strength, I further my own interests
Executive salary packages are my judge, not I for good product or service
You see, this labour term will draw to a close:
For when Aunty Helen doth remonstrate and capitulate
The job prospects shall be my focus therefore
And consultancy junkets occur not long after
But I will send my CV’s by broadband
For bandwidth to conspire against: I may not get where I want
August 3rd, 2007 at 3:12 pm
Mike - you call that smut? you need to get out more.
Ben - what exactly is it that you do?
August 3rd, 2007 at 4:59 pm
Brenda - check out this month’s Unlimited Mag - it kind of explains (better than I could truth be known) what I do.
As for the poetry sideline - I’m at home with the flu and it’s an escape from screaming arguing children! (Love them as I do of course!)
August 3rd, 2007 at 5:07 pm
Profit that holy grail!
That pushes some to deceive
Arthur Andersen?
August 3rd, 2007 at 5:10 pm
There once was a boy who had a wild dream
A heater he wanted, or so it would seem
So he set about creating an empire
That with hindsight would raise Ebay’s ire
And make bucket fulls of money for the entire team
August 10th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
[…] Five-Second Rule Humor (Eating Food You’ve Dropped On The Floor - Limerick and Poll): MAD KANE’S HUM… […]
August 12th, 2007 at 11:05 pm
[…] much effect on you. So, as sole judge and arbiter, I’ve changed the rules and closed the Poetry Competition. Thanks to Brenda, Mike and Ben for their […]