In Competition No. 2852 you were invited to step into the shoes of a well-known writer of your choice and submit a poem or piece of prose in praise or defence of something you would not expect them to champion.
You were on top form this week. Martin Parker reveals a lighter side of Leonard Cohen with a nice twist on ‘Bird on a Wire’, while Alanna Blake’s Wordsworth has a soft spot for wind farms. Ernest Hemingway comes out for the League Against Cruel Sports and against sobriety. And J. Seery’s Barbara Cartland shows her true Marxist colours (‘There is no phrase in English more sensuous than “dialectical materialism”’).
Other stellar performers were John Samson, Josephine Boyle, C.J. Gleed and Jamie Burnham, who restyles Arthur Ransome as a health-and-safety nut. The winners take £25 and Frank Upton earns the extra fiver.
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