Posted on by mark

Cult Challenge: November 2024: “The Final Text Message”

“The Final Text Message”

I am so verily chuffed to say that we had some mighty fine poems responding to this challenge, and the est of them I’ve included in a wee anthology. Work came from:
    1. Gerald Killingworth
    2. Amanda Hill
    3. Julie De Brito
    4. Liz Kendall
    5. Nigel Kent
    6. Roger Waldron
    7. Wendy Goulstone
    8. Christopher House
    9. Philippa Ramsden
    10. Julie Leoni
    11. Miriam Moore
    12. Patricia M Osborne
    13. Phil Santus
    14. Neil Windsor
The Challenge: The ‘Final Words’, a ‘Dying Declaration’,  the ‘Suicide Note’, perhaps the ‘Last Will and Testament’ have always a chance for any of us – although hopefully a long time from now – to have the final words on whatever the matter is that really matters and in some ways speak from beyond the grave. In fact, they could even be carved on a stone over a grave. How final is that? I thinking about this the other day as I was clearing some drawers and came across an old mobile phone from the 1990s, and remembered that when SMS / text messages arrived, how revolutionary and nice it was not to have to talk to work colleagues, you could instead just send them a message and err, they would never know that you were still in bed. (Just me?) Anyway, I also remembered (looked-up)  that initially such messages were limited to a grand 160 characters, including spaces, and this gave rise to the death of punctuation and the English language as we knew it. Probably. But this challenge isn’t meant to be morbid or a complaint, instead I wanted you to think of a final, short message that you can convey in the form of a poem that doesn’t exceed 160 characters (excluding the spaces – I won’t count them.) The Challenge then is really simple. Say something profound, pithy, bitchy or funny that you would like to leave behind, but useno more than 160 characters. To be clear:
      1. Write a Poem that tells us your final message in 160 characters or less
      2. The poem can be of any type or style
Rules:
      1. You must be a Cult Member to submit your poem – sending it to competition@hedgehogpress.co.uk
      2. Send the poem by 11.59pm on the 30th November 2024
The best poems/responses will be included in a wee book to be published during 2025