Spectator competition winners: food that kills

The latest challenge was to submit a poem about a deadly foodstuff. The inspiration for this assignment was the appalling news that toast can kill you, which is yet another depressing indication that everything good is bad for you. Or perhaps, as Max Gutmann suggests in the closing couplet of his winning entry, it’s safer simply to regard all food as a potential enemy. Honourable mentions to Mae Scanlan and Jennifer Moore, and £25 each to the winners. D.A. Prince scoops the bonus fiver.

D.A. Prince Amanita phalloides! Yes, my darling, just for you — hunter-gathered when your need is homely soup to add them to.

Fresh and creamy-clean, so wholesome; don’t they tempt your appetite! Mushrooms feed your hungry soul; come this soup is exactly right.

Shun the supermarkets’ offering — carbon footprint, packaged, stale; these are handmade personal profferings like the stuff of fairy tale.

Not for me, alas — my diet: but I’d have some if I could.