Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2007/05/03/txt_laureate/

Granny waxes lyrical in 'txt laureate' challenge

'O hart tht sorz, My luv adorz...'

By Lester Haines

Posted in Networks, 3rd May 2007 11:22 GMT

A 68-year-old grandmother from Accrington, Lancashire, has rather agreeably secured runner-up spot and £350 in T-Mobile's "txt laureate" contest, Reuters reports.

The hunt for the UK's most romantic handset owner challenged would-be Betjemans to wax lyrical in the "ultimate SMS love poem", and Eileen Bridge saw off all but one of her fellow 200 entrants with this celebration of her hubby: "O hart tht sorz, My luv adorz, He mAks me liv, He mAks me giv, Myslf 2 him, As my luv porz."

Top spot and £1,000, however, went to 23-year-old London law student Ben Ziman-Bright, who offered: "Not even the wet rustle of rain can dampen today. Your text buoys me above oil-rainbow puddles like a paper boat, so that even soaked to the skin, I am grinning."

Competition judge Luke Wright, who appeared in "Luke Wright, Poet Laureate" at last year's Edinburgh fringe, said of the winning entry: "Ben was easily the winner because of things like his contrast of the 'oil-rainbow' puddles, which is poetic and abstract. Then his last line about 'grinning' brings the poem right back down to earth." ®