In Competition No. 3116 you were invited to submit an extract from a government memo whose language would meet with the approval of Jacob Rees-Mogg. The Leader of the House recently sent his departmental staff a list of rules regarding grammar and vocabulary. The words ‘ongoing’ and ‘hopefully’ are out; imperial measurements are in. All
In Competition No. 3115 you were invited to submit a fable for the 21st century, complete with moral. James Michie, my predecessor in the judge’s seat, was a celebrated translator of fables and if you were looking for inspiration, and don’t speak French, his 1973 rendering of a selection by La Fontaine were described by
In Competition No. 3114 you were invited to submit estate agents’ details in the style of a well-known author. Highlights, in a cracking entry, included Jeremy Carlisle’s Hemingway: ‘Who needs a house? Certainly no real man known to this agency. Cabin by lakeside for sale… A cabin of strong oak-framed construction. The timbers are
In Competition No. 3113 you were invited to submit an acrostic poem about a politician in which the first letter of each line spells the name of that politician. While most of set your sights on modern-day politicians, David Silverman (as well as his poignant prizewinning haiku) penned a double-dactylic portrait of Caesar Augustus:
In Competition No. 3112 you were invited to submit an extract from Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Brexiteers. The title of this new addition to the G&S canon was, of course, a nod to The Gondoliers. But in an entry both serious and silly, full of wit and whimsy, you also plundered The Mikado (‘Four
In Competition No. 3111 you were invited to submit William Topaz McGonagall’s poetic response to Magaluf. The Tayside Tragedian was much taken with the town of Torquay, and wrote a poem singing its praises. But what would he have made of Shagaluf? He took a dim view of alcohol, if these lines are anything
In Competition No. 3110 you were invited to provide a version of the hokey-cokey filtered through the pen of a well-known writer. Thanks to George Simmers and C. Paul Evans, I now know that doing the hokey–cokey — said by some to have been composed by Puritans in the 18th century to mock the
In Competition No. 3109 you were invited to submit a short story entitled ‘The Last Bumble Bee’. The buff-tailed bumblebee, Bombus terrestris, was once voted Britain’s favourite insect, and this challenge seemed to strike a chord, inspiring stories that ranged from the topical to visions of a near-future of drone pollinators and enforced entomophagy. The
In Competition No. 3108 you were invited to submit a sonnet with the following end rhymes: son, mire, fire, won, run, re-inspire, attire, spun, choice, rise, voice, air, spare, unwise. The end rhymes are taken from Milton’s Sonnet 20, ‘Lawrence of virtuous father virtuous son’. Milton was the most political of poets, and many of
In Competition No. 3107 you were invited to provide an extract that is a mash-up of two well-known works of literature. The germ for this challenge was the discovery that Middlemarch was originally two separate works — a novel about the townspeople (the Vincys, Bulstrode, etc) and a short story called ‘Miss Brooke’, which focused
In Competition No. 3106 you were invited to submit a poem with an ingenious twist at the end. This challenge, a popular one, was deceptively tricky and while there were many accomplished and enjoyable entries, none of your twists truly blew my socks off. Douglas G. Brown, Max Gutmann and Martin Elster were unlucky runners-up.
In Competition No. 3105 you were invited to submit a fragment of commentary on the Women’s World Cup delivered by a figure from the world of fact or fiction, dead or alive. From Joseph Houlihan’s William McGonagall, who chronicles the Scottish team’s defeat at the boots of the Auld Enemy, to R.M. Goddard’s Samuel Beckett
In Competition No. 3104 you were invited to encapsulate the life story of a well-known person, living or dead, in three limericks. The limerick form was neatly summed up by the late Paul Griffin, long-time competitor and a regular winner on these pages: A limerick’s short and it’s slick; Like a racehorse it
In Competition No. 3103 you were invited to submit a Shakespearean soliloquy delivered by one of the contenders for the Tory leadership in which they consider their pitch for the top job. Though many chose to plug the gap created by Boris Johnson’s public reticence, there was a sprinkling of his fellow hopefuls. Most are
In Competition No. 3102 you were invited to submit a fan letter from one well-known person from the field of fact or fiction to another. Frank McDonald’s Lady Macbeth fist-bumps Nicola Sturgeon: ‘My dearest Nicola there is no need/ For me to pour my spirits in thine ear;/ Already you excel me in your
In Competition No. 3101 you were invited to compose a contemporary take on ‘The New Colossus’, the 1883 sonnet by Emma Lazarus that is inscribed on a bronze plaque on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. Written as part of an effort to raise money for the construction of the 89ft pedestal, the
In Competition 3100 you were invited to pen an ode to Alexa or Siri. A recent Unesco study claimed that submissive female-voiced virtual assistants perpetuate negative, out-dated gender stereotypes, and this assignment did seem to bring out the unreconstructed roguish side in some. You know who you are. The winners below earn £25 each.
In Competition No. 3099 you were invited to dream up an imaginary animal that is a hybrid of two existing ones and write a poem about it. The discovery, some time ago, that the Romans called a giraffe a ‘cameleopard’ (also the subject of a poem by Thomas Hood) gave me the initial idea
In Competition No. 3098 you were invited to submit a poem that can be read forwards and backwards, i.e. from the top down and the bottom up. I worried, as the entries trickled in, that I had set the bar too high, especially given the anguished comments that accompanied some of them. ‘This was
In Competition No. 3097 you were invited to submit a poem about Englishness in the style of a well-known poet. The line-up was mostly predictable — from Chesterton, so-called ‘prophet of Brexit’, through Larkin, Betjeman, Brooke, Housman and, of course, Kipling. But it was an American, Ogden Nash, whose pen portrait of us prompted