Spectator competition winners: Laureates past on the engagement of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle

The latest challenge asked for a poem written by a poet laureate present or past on the engagement of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. The role of laureate is not for everyone. Craig Raine once said to Ted Hughes, during a discussion of the then-vacant post, ‘Of course, no one in their right mind would really want it.’ (‘You’d get some terrific fishing,’ Hughes responded.) And Andrew Motion — who was in the hot seat for ten years and was much mocked for the rap he wrote to mark Prince William’s 21st birthday — was candid about its pitfalls: ‘How was I to steer an appropriate course between familiarity (which would seem presumptuous) and sycophancy (which would seem absurd)?’ You strode into the minefield with gusto, and there was much to admire in a largish and vigorous entry. Frank Osen and A.H. Harker both took inspiration from Tennyson’s ‘The May Queen’, and I much enjoyed George Simmers’s waspish twist on Masefield’s ‘Cargoes’.