Spectator competition winners: The ballad of Mar-a-Lago

This week’s challenge marks the centenary this year of the birth of Muriel Spark. ‘I still take a poetic view of life as I see it through the novel,’ Spark once said, explaining that she viewed her novels as long prose poems. So a verse assignment seemed just the thing: you were asked to come up with poems with the title ‘The Ballad of [insert place name here]’. The entry that most closely referenced Spark’s glorious The Ballad of Peckham Rye was Max Gutmann’s but there were deft Sparkian touches elsewhere. I especially admired David Silverman’s crisp, caustic, comic ‘Ballad of Westgate Shopping Centre’, and Paul Carpenter’s timely ‘Ballad of Knotty Ash’) was good too. The prizes, though, go to those printed below, who take £25 each.

The Ballad of Mar-a-Lago by Chris O’Carroll In the gold of the Florida sunshine, Where gunplay enlivens the air, The rich pay to hang with the richer At the president’s opulent lair.

With its beach-blanket, surfer-dude moniker And its six-figure membership fees, This joint is the acme of classy, Like those White House Seals marking the tees.

This enclave is stately like Vegas, With the gilt of imperial Rome.