In Competition No. 3053, an assignment prompted by Anthony Horowitz’s reflections on creating female characters for his latest Bond novel, you were invited to provide an extract from a well-known work that might be considered sexist by today’s standards and rework it for the #MeToo age.
Highlights in a thoroughly enjoyable entry included Brian Allgar’s Constance Chatterley instructing Mellors in the importance of foreplay, Paul Freeman’s recasting of Orwell’s antihero as Weinstein Smith and Hugh King addressing the gender stereo-typing in The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
The worthy winners, printed below, earn £20 each.
‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’;
Well, frankly, Will, I’d rather you did NOT.
You’ll find some fanciful poetic way
Of tarting up the message: ‘Babe, you’re hot!’
It will, no doubt, be finely written stuff
By one who’s at the summit of his powers,
But honestly, instead of all that guff,
I’d rather have some chocolates or flowers.
When offering a ‘gift’ of poetry,
The writer tends to have himself in view,
And though ostensibly addressed to me,
I’m sure we’ll find the subject’s really you.
You’ll claim your poetry’s so bloody clever
That, thanks to what you wrote, I’ll live for ever.
Sylvia Smith/Sonnet 18
Humbert, bit of a spent match, a fizzle. His solo, my sogyny. Hum-bert: the tastebuds having a dumb drivel through the pharynx, with a gurgle in the glottis. Hum. Bert. He was Mr. Chips, Chipper for short, standing at the dais with his egg-stained tie. He was M. Humbert in the novel. He was Ho-hum in cavalry twills. But let’s face it, he was old Vladimir Nabokov, rhymes with broke off, in the actual flesh. Did he have an antecedent? Bet your life, bet your life twice over. The beaches were swarming with nymphet-aholics. Just a scrap of skin, of flesh, is all it took.
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