Spectator competition winners: poems inspired by the phonetic alphabet

In Competition No. 3210, you were invited to provide a poem or a piece of prose containing words from the phonetic alphabet.

The brief didn’t stipulate that you incorporate all 26 words, but hats off to those who shoehorned them in. In a whopping, wide-ranging entry, with echoes of Keats and MacNeice, and ‘Papa’ Hemingway looming large, Nick Syrett, Nick MacKinnon and Frank Upton shone, but it was a terrific performance all round. The winners earn £30 each.

Why on earth in ’56 did someone rearrange The old phonetic alphabet of 1943, While leaving just four letters of its twenty-six unchanged As Charlie X-ray Mike remained and Victor kept his V? Quebec has now replaced the Queen and Love’s gone down the pan. New Whiskey killed off William while November did for Nan As Easy, Fox and How and Jig were all flushed down the bog With Peter, Uncle, Oboe, Sugar, Item, Tare and Dog; And Able, Baker, Zebra, George were also cancelled then By the random vandalism of some bureaucrat’s red pen Which added some replacements which scarcely augur well Like Yankee Tango Uniform and Zulu Golf Hotel.