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The world memory championship asks competitors to memorise an unpublished poem in 15 minutes and recall it in 20. Have a go. This is one of their previous poems:


A Case of knives. (Ted Hughes).

Cobblers and carpenters, in twenties and fifties,
Are spun like Tops by angry tongues a pair
That go on to insult statues till they are fatally
Politically corrected. A prophet
Rends from a Ram's heart: "See, two assassins
Beneath one cloak are slinking under the leg-arch
Of a Colossus." The Tripled roar of a city
Goes up like three smoke rings, three crowns.
An epileptic falls
Into the heart of a nation. In a dark room
Three men examine a dagger
On a bright night. Under a rain of fire
A turning man, fallen from a battle on the clouds
Rides a lion unhurt, bringing a letter
To one who reads it by lightning
Then turns back to the gang digging the grave.
But the sick man has leapt out of his bed
Leaving another man's wife with the nightmare
Where heaven falls and statues are blood-fountains
A hand is stroking a nervous lion. A hand
Is drawing on its flank a horoscope
Like a dial target. A ring of hands
Make a starry zodiac of daggers
Criss-crossing their squares and oppositions
At the earthy centre. A god of havoc
Leans back on two bunched handfuls
Of hounds' leashes, as a tight-rope walker
Delivers a speech balancing on a coffin
That bucks in an earthquake. A tricky moment.
Mobs pour up through cracks in the paving and
Two men on horseback, heads down
Beside their horses' ears, go through a gateway
Like devils casts from a body possessed.
In a little calm two laughing men
Pin down a third, like a butterfly.
A spurred horse collapses and a woman
Bursting into flames burns two soldiers.
But now a ghost, rising out of a lute,
Pours bewildering acid into their burns.
So through the cloud of pain two eagles flee
From a flock of crows, jackdaws and ravens.
Assuming the worst, by pure habit,
A soldier mingles a sunset
With his own hara kiri. The tide of woe
Burns two steady eyes and lifts away
The foundation block of integrity
That was a man stabbed by a phantom. A single
Tear of joy winks on the sea of sorrows.