Spectator competition: a final ‘if’ for Kipling’s ‘If’ (plus: compose an autumn villanelle)

The call to add a final stanza to a well-known poem attracted an enormous entry. 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 installment 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 prize-winners below, who are rewarded with £15 each. Chris O’Carroll takes the bonus fiver.

Chris O’Carroll/‘The King’s Breakfast’ The Queen had A word with The King’s Cardiologist. ‘I fear my husband’s over fond Of dairy foods’, she said. ‘Butter can be Dangerous’, The doctor warned Her Majesty.