In Competition No. 3199, you were invited to supply a poem in which an inanimate object comments on its owner’s behaviour. Shoshana Zuboff’s recent book about the growth of surveillance capitalism gave me the idea for this competition. In it she warns of a future in which, to satisfy big tech’s insatiable appetite for data,
In Competition No. 3198, you were invited to supply an extract from a children’s book that is designed to explain economics to youngsters. The seed for this challenge was former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis’s Talking to My Daughter: A Brief History of Capitalism in which he uses the device of answering questions put by
In Competition No. 3197, you were invited to supply a poem to mark the death of Prince Philip. I wondered if anyone, inspired by his touching lines on the death of his beloved Queen Victoria, might channel the poet and tragedian William McGonagall: Alas! our noble and generous Queen Victoria is dead,And I hope her
In Competition No. 3196, you were invited to supply a reply to the poet from Frances Cornford’s fat woman or Shakespeare’s dark lady. Philip Roe and George Simmers both reminded me that G.K. Chesterton set the bar high with ‘The Fat White Woman Speaks’, his response to Cornford’s triolet (which was also parodied by A.E.
In Competition No. 3195, you were invited to submit an extract from the racier, mass-market version of a well-known literary novel. Speaking at Bath Literature festival in 2015, the author Fay Weldon suggested that writers should write two versions of their books, a high-minded one for print, and a more accessible page-turner for e-readers: ‘Writers
In Competition No. 3194, inspired by Tony Harrison’s poem ‘A Kumquat for John Keats’, you were invited to write a poem of that title but substituting your choice of poet and a piece of fruit. It was a palmary entry, so I’ve made space for an extra winner. Hats off, all round, and £20 each
In Competition No. 3193 you were invited to submit clerihews (two couplets, AABB, metrically clunky, humorous in tone) on members of the royal family, past or present. This one was a crowd-pleaser and drew a whopping entry. An inevitable element of repetition didn’t detract from the overall excellence, so congratulations, all round. I was sorry
In Competition No. 3192 you were invited to submit a short story that features an animal (or animals) taking revenge on humankind. The spur for this challenge was John Gray’s engaging and insightful book Feline Philosophy, which alerted me to Patricia Highsmith’s short story ‘Ming’s Biggest Prey’, about a Siamese cat who eliminates a human
In Competition No. 3191 you were invited to submit a Shakespearean soliloquy reflecting on the news that the Bard has been cancelled by some US academics. Teachers in the States have called into question the centrality of Shakespeare in the English curriculum given that his works are, according to Amanda MacGregor, writing in the School
In Competition No. 3190 you were invited to submit the first paragraph of your least favourite type of novel. Sci-fi was the most well represented genre by a long way, with many thinking along similar lines. Here’s a flavour from Joe Houlihan: Not for the first time, Drod Vordant was struck by the ethereal beauty
In Competition No. 3189 you were invited to submit a poem about a favourite smell. This challenge certainly seemed to strike a chord — not surprising, perhaps, given the looming threat of Covid-induced anosmia. As Brian Murdoch puts it: Be ever grateful for your sense of smell!Treat no aroma with the least disdain,In case some
In Competition No. 3188, a challenge designed to make us all feel better about the looming prospect of another enforced staycation, you were invited to submit a postcard from a friend on holiday abroad that makes you relieved you aren’t there. Whenever I find myself dreaming of a trip to see the Northern Lights, I
In Competition No. 3187 you were asked to provide a sea shanty on a topical theme. This challenge was an invitation to follow in the slipstream of Nathan Evans, the postal worker and TikTokker whose rendition of the 19th-century whaling song ‘The Wellerman’ went viral and gave rise to #ShantyTok. Among the multiple variations on
In Competition No. 3186 you were invited to supply an acrostic poem praising or dispraising a public figure, in which the word/s spelled out by the first letter of each line directly contradicts what the poem is saying. In an era of fake news, rampant conspiracy theories and ever-spiralling paranoia, acrostics are having a moment:
In Competition No. 3185 you were invited to compose a sonnet called ‘England in 2021’. The challenge was inspired by Shelley’s political sonnet ‘England in 1819’, in which he paints a scathing picture of a broken country, rotten to the core, and rages against king (‘old, mad, blind, despised, and dying’), aristocracy, parliament, church and
In Competition No. 3184 you were invited to tell a joke in verse form. This challenge, suggested by a reader and coming at a time when we could all do with a laugh, drew a large and jolly entry. As space is short, I pause only to salute stellar performances all around before handing over
In Competition No. 3183 you were invited to submit a short story entitled ‘My Year of Living [insert adverb of your choice here]’. Highlights in a varied and engaging entry included John Priestland’s ‘Year of Living Paradoxically’, which combined elements of Hilbert’s Infinite Hotel Paradox with the Grandfather Paradox (think Back to the Future), and
In Competition No. 3182 you were invited to rewrite a famous piece of light verse with a dirge-like, hieratic tone (as if we need any more doom and gloom). Robert Schechter put a downer on light verse supremo Ogden Nash’s pithy ‘Reflections on Ice-Breaking’, ‘Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker’: Time is a burden
In Competition No. 3181 you were invited to submit a letter by a publisher rejecting a well-known literary classic. The authors of Lolita and The Bell Jar (‘an ill-conceived, poorly written novel’) are among distinguished recipients of multiple rejections. And T.S. Eliot famously turned down George Orwell’s Animal Farm (its shortcomings included the wrong type
In Competition No. 3180 you were invited to submit a Belloc-esque cautionary tale featuring a high-profile public figure. Cautionary Tales for Children, published in 1907 and ‘designed for the admonition of children between the ages of eight and fourteen years’, featured such cruel and hideous comeuppances as being eaten, feet upwards, by a lion and
