In Competition No. 2867 you were invited to add a final stanza to a well-known poem.
Nicholas Stone imagined how Coleridge might have continued had it not been for the intrusion of the Person of Porlock. Tracy Davidson’s coda to ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ painted a picture of interspecies conjugal bliss turned sour. And Penn Harvey added a final instalment to Wallace Stevens’s chilly modernist masterpiece ‘The Emperor of Ice-Cream’.
There were strong performances all round this week and it was difficult to whittle down the entry. Bill Greenwell, Katie Mallett, Alanna Blake, Mike Morrison and Brian Murdoch were pipped to the post, but only just, by the prizewinners below, who are rewarded with £15 each. Chris O’Carroll takes the bonus fiver.
The Queen had
A word with
The King’s
‘I fear my husband’s over fond
Of dairy foods,’ she said.
‘Butter can be
Dangerous,’
The doctor warned
Her Majesty.
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