In Competition No. 3019 you were invited to submit a limerick describing a feat worthy of inclusion in Guinness World Records. This assignment is a nod to my nine-year-old son, who is a big fan of astonishing facts. Every year, when he gets his mitts on the latest Guinness World Records, he follows me
In Competition No. 3018 you were invited to take your lead from Meik Wiking — CEO at the Happiness Research Institute and author of The Little Book of Hygge and The Little Book of Lykke — and provide an extract from your own Little Book of…. When I set this challenge, I had in mind
In Competition No. 3017 you were invited to submit a sonnet containing household tips. You were on sparkling form this week and there were plenty of stylish, inventive entries to choose from. I was riveted by your recommendations and hope to put them to the test, though I might just take John Whitworth’s word
In Competition No. 3016 you were invited to submit an extract from the diary of the spouse of a high-profile political figure, living or dead. It was a neat idea on the part of David Silverman to imagine Calpurnia’s journal in the style of Bridget Jones’s Diary, but hard to match the genius of
In Competition No. 3015 you were invited to submit a poem about Big Ben’s bongs. The decision to remove the 13-tonne bell during the four-year restoration works on Elizabeth Tower has caused a right old ding-dong, with senior ministers, including the PM, joining the fray. There were lots of poems about health and
In Competition No. 3014 you were invited to submit a love poem written by one contemporary politician to another. Virginia Price Evans, writing on behalf of Jeremy Corbyn, channelled Betjeman in a bid to woo the PM: ‘Theresa M May, Theresa M May, I sigh and I die for our special day…’. Frank Upton’s
In Competition No. 3013 you were invited to submit a poem in praise or dispraise of August. There was a whiff of collusion about the entry this week, so many references were there to rubbish television, rubbish weather, fractious kiddies, tired gardens, traffic jams; as Katie Mallett puts it: ‘A turgid time of torpor
In Competition No. 3012 you were invited to change a letter in the title of a well-known play and submit a programme note for the new production. Thanks to Steven Joseph, who suggested this excellent competition topic. David Silverman’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Deaf started well but ran out of steam halfway through. Other
In Competition No. 3011 you were invited to submit a disgustingly flattering poem in heroic couplets in praise of a contemporary person of power. You were at your bootlicking best this week: Donald Trump, Anthony Scaramucci, Xi Jinping, Emmanuel Macron and Vladimir Putin were all on the receiving end of some serious sucking-up. Bill Greenwell’s
In Competition No. 3010, a nod to the late, great George Romero, you were invited to provide an extract from a mash-up of a literary classic of your choice and horror fiction. Nathan Weston’s Werewolf Hall, Brian Murdoch’s The Gruffalo in Transylvania, Bill Greenwell’s Three Men and a Zombie and Nicholas MacKinnon’s The Nightmare
In Competition No. 3009 you were invited to submit a poem about a domestic object. I set this challenge with Philip Larkin’s ‘The Mower’ in mind, which he wrote in the summer of 1979 after inadvertently killing a hedgehog while cutting the grass. According to Betty Mackereth, Larkin’s secretary and onetime lover, he told
In Competition No. 3008 you were invited to take the last line of a well-known novel and make it the first line of a short story written in the style of the author in question. There’s room only for me to lament the lack of space for more winners; the judging process was especially
In Competition No. 3007 you were invited to submit a poem about Larry, the Downing Street cat. Larry came to No. 10 in 2011 from Battersea Dogs & Cats Home during David Cameron’s premiership. He was left behind when the family moved on, though Mr Cameron denied that this was because he hated cats. Although
In Competition No. 3006 you were invited to submit a sonnet that takes as its opening line Keats’s ‘Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell:’ (This was a sonnet Keats chose not to publish but transcribed into a long letter he wrote over a period in early 1819 to George and Georgiana Keats,
In Competition No. 3005 you were invited to take your inspiration from Anthony Lane’s terrific ‘The Book of Jeremy Corbyn’, an account of the general election that ran recently in the New Yorker and was shared widely on social media: ‘And there came from the same country a prophet, whose name was Jeremy. His beard
In Competition No. 3004 you were invited to submit an extract from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Trumpland. As I was listening to Kellyanne Conway’s alternative-facts interview earlier this year, Humpty Dumpty’s words from Through the Looking-Glass floated into my mind (‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means
In Competition No. 3003 you were invited to supply clerihews about contemporary politicians. In an enormous and excellent entry, popular rhymes included ‘charmer’ and ‘Starmer’; ‘Boris’ and ‘Horace’; ‘Sturgeon’ and ‘burgeon’; ‘Corbyn’ and ‘absorbing’. Putin likes to ‘put the boot in’, apparently, and that David Davis is, by common consent, a ‘rara avis’. There
In Competition No. 3002 you were invited to provide lyrics to the European anthem. The anthem has as its melody the final movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 but dispenses with Schiller’s words. I wondered if anyone might go back to his 1785 ‘Ode to Joy’ and repurpose the following lines: ‘Yea, if any hold
In Competition No. 3001 you were invited to take inspiration from the recently published Walt Whitman’s Guide to Manly Health and Training and supply an extract from a similar guide penned by another well-known writer. While Whitman extols the benefits of stale bread and fresh air and cautions against eating between meals, Fiona Pitt-Kethley’s John
In Competition No. 3000 you were invited to provide an answer, in verse or prose, to a famous literary question of your choosing. Two admirably pithy responses to Hamlet’s dilemma came courtesy of Carolyn Beckingham: ‘To be, or not to be: that is the question.’ ‘If you’re not certain, wait,’ is my suggestion. The