Rhyme of an ancient mariner finally wins him a £1,000 prize for poetry

Charles Evans, 71, of Blackheath, has taken the £1,000 second place in the National Poetry Competition, beating 7,500 other poets with his work, Libretto.

He was pipped to the £5,000 top spot at last night's prize ceremony at the Savile Club by Christopher James who won with his poem, Farewell To The Earth.

But Lt-Cdr Evans could not have been more thrilled and he said: "I've written poetry for a long time but this is my first big prize.

"It's the thing I would have most liked to have succeeded in. I can remember thinking when I left university, 'Shall I write?' But respectability and jobs and safety closed in."

He spent most of his career in the Royal Navy, including lecturing on communism and Russian culture at Greenwich and Sandhurst. "I taught about Marxism when Soviet Russia was in existence and we had to understand the enemy. But I was always writing. I was a misfit, a fish out of water."

Libretto is about someone who fails to understand that what is happening in an opera is not real.

EXTRACT FROM LIBRETTO BY CHARLES EVANS

The heroine lay dying in her pasteboard cot
Seized by coughing, clutching with both hands
The big tenor who knelt at her side
It was too much
I slipped from my seat, stumbled through feet and knees
Mounted the stage in a burst of saving love
For heaven's sake, I said, she's a sick woman
An attic is no place for a consumptive
They hustled me to the wings

She took the stage, flaunting her gypsy skirt
In a fast spin, taunting with jutting hips
The workers who crowded close
I saw the danger
Hurried down, pushed aside the protesting musicians
Climbed the steps in a last bid to stop the brawl
Calm down, I told them, love's all right in its place
But there's no need for knives
They escorted me to the foyer

The full poem can be read on www.poetrysociety.org.uk