Competition: That was the year that was

Spectator literary competition No. 2828

As the New Year hurtles towards us, it’s time for a retrospective commentary, in verse, on 2013. Please email entries of up to 16 lines to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 9 December (the shorter deadline is because of our seasonal production schedule).

The recent competition to supply a poem for a well-known painting was inspired by the poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who composed a sonnet, ‘Found’, in 1881 as a companion to an unfinished oil painting of the same title on the theme of prostitution, which is now in the Delaware Museum. You weren’t obliged to write a sonnet (a few did).

Rossetti’s Pre-Raphaelite brethren popped up regularly in the entry. Melanie Branton’s companion piece to Millais’ ‘Ophelia’, a lament from a long-suffering Lizzie Siddal, made me smile. Rembrandt’s self-portraits were also a popular choice.
This week the lack of space for more winners was more frustrating than usual.