Street lamps glimmer in the smoky night of Victorian London.

In a tall, dark house, a pipe smoulders on a mantlepiece and a violin leans against a wall echoing tunes played long ago.

A bloodhound lies by a crackling fire watching a fly, landing on a Venus fly-trap.

Like a fish swimming into the net.

Or an unsuspecting criminal, falling into the snare of a master detective.

By Kate Lines, age 12, who receives Penguin Modern Poets 1. Submitted by Mr C Yates of Maharishi School, Ormskirk, Lancashire, who receives the Poetry Society teachers’ newsletter, a quarterly bulletin which includes features on innovative approaches to poetry in the classroom. For Poetry Society events, ring 0171 240 4810.

I was much taken with Kate’s encapsulation of the great man and particularly like the combination of the crackling fire and the Venus fly-trap. That you’d be unlikely to find these things together doesn’t invalidate them as images; the Holmesian accoutrements are artfully deployed to paint the portrait.