In Competition No. 2968 you were-invited to take the title of a short story by Ted Hughes, How the Whale Became, substitute-another animal or fish for ‘whale’ and provide a tale with that title. This comp was an absolute delight to judge. There were oodles of well-turned entries bursting with charm. Well done. Special mention
In Competition No. 2967 you were invited to submit an article written by the author of your choice under the headline ‘If I were Prime Minister’. In a fascinating 1959 essay written for The Spectator under that headline, Ian Fleming proposed, among much else, a combination of ‘benevolent Stakhanovism’ in the workplace and the conversion
In Competition No. 2966 you were invited to filter popular nursery rhymes through the prism of political correctness. Some years ago, CBeebies came under fire when it took all the fun out of ‘Humpty Dumpty’ by changing the words to give it a happy ending. And it wasn’t just Humpty;-Little Miss Muffet and the spider
In Competition No. 2965, an enormously popular one, you were invited to write a poem about a verse form, written in that form. It was Edna St Vincent Millay’s sonnet-about-the-sonnet ‘I will put Chaos into fourteen lines’ that inspired this challenge but there are other similar examples — Robert Burns’s fine ‘A Sonnet upon Sonnets’,
In Competition No. 2964 you were invited to suggest a really bad idea for one, or several, of the following: a children’s book; an Olympic sport; a television sitcom; a reality TV series. Reading the entry brought back fond if painful memories of Alan Partridge’s Inner-City Sumo — ‘We take fat people from inner cities,
In Competition No. 2963 you were invited to submit a poem about the North or the South or one comparing the two. -Tennyson’s lines ‘bright and fierce and fickle is the South,/And dark and true and tender is the North’ (from ‘The Princess: O Swallow’), which inspired this challenge, produced a wide-ranging and exhilarating entry
In Competition No. 2962 you were invited to supply a poem about a body part of an author of your choosing. This challenge was inspired by the engaging title of a book by John Sutherland: Orwell’s Nose. In 2012 Sutherland permanently lost his sense of smell. Shortly thereafter, he set about rereading the works of
In Competition No. 2961 you were invited to submit limericks that might have been written by Boris Johnson in an attempt to smooth ruffled feathers on the international stage. Boris has said that ‘it would really take me too long to engage in a fully global itinerary of apology’ to all those who have taken
In Competition No. 2960 you were invited to submit a poem on the theme of summer in which the last two words of each line rhyme. It was only after the entries started coming in that I realised that my sloppy wording meant that the brief was open to interpretation. In most submissions, the last
In Competition No. 2959 you were invited to submit a poem on a political theme entitled ‘May day’. There was a good turnout, but the mood was overwhelmingly bleak despite the efforts of a relentlessly optimistic few, Tim Raikes and Alanna Blake among them. But there was much to admire, including a neat riff from
In Competition No. 2958 you were invited to submit a conversation between St Peter and a well-known figure who is demanding admission to heaven. Although the brief asked for a dialogue, Janice Harayda’s Donald Trump made the cut despite St Peter not getting a word in edgeways. Given that Trump doesn’t come across as the
In Competition No. 2957 you were invited to submit a poem with a title that is a twist on that of Keats’s sonnet ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’. There was a fair amount of doubling-up this week: while G.M. Davis and Tracy Davidson decided to speculate on what the first perusal of an Ann
In Competition No. 2956 you were invited to provide extracts from the unappealing-sounding programme of a festival that is making a misguided attempt to stand out in an overcrowded marketplace. Competitors might have taken inspiration from The Daily Mash’s ‘Magic Fox Vintage Smoothie Boutique Urban Forest Pop Up Chill Retreat’, a ‘hybrid of Waitrose and
In Competition No. 2955 you were invited to supply a report on a Uefa Euro 2016 match written in the florid style beloved of some sportswriters. There was some inspired awfulness on display this week. How about this, from Mike Morrison: ‘The craven defence unravelled like cartoon knitwear, enabling Dottirdottir, the archetype of stoic strategy,
In Competition No. 2954 you were invited to supply an ode to a greasy spoon, a challenge prompted by a recent column that Melissa Kite wrote bemoaning the rise of independent cafés and the consequent demise of the decent, non-locally foraged fry-up. Most of your odes were to a caff, but a few chose to
In Competition No. 2953 you were invited to supply a sonnet that has the name of a tree hidden in every line. This fiendish challenge, which was suggested by a reader, drew a large entry — and the following envoi from Alanna Blake: ‘Gor blimey, not the easiest of romps!/ But, Lucy, press on with
In Competition No. 2952 you were invited to submit nonsense verse of up to 16 lines on the subject of the EU referendum. So, as if you hadn’t had quite enough nonsense for one referendum — on stilts or otherwise — here’s another helping; though hopefully one that will make you smile rather than snarl.
In Competition No. 2951 you were invited to remove a letter from a well-known book title and submit an extract from the new work. This challenge, prompted by the hash tag #RemoveALetterSpoilABook that’s been doing the rounds on Twitter, saw you at your best. Among many highlights in a large and inventive entry were Robert
In Competition No. 2950 you were invited to propose a new and ludicrous piece of legislation along with a justification for it. Although Basil Ransome-Davies makes it into the winning line-up, some might argue that his proposal is far from ludicrous, given that cats are taking over the internet. Another suggestion that struck me as
In Competition No. 2949 you were invited to submit a poem about sharing a drink with a famous writer. I suspected this might be a popular comp and so it proved. I was spoilt for choice winner-wise, so heartfelt commiserations to the many who came within a whisker of making the final cut, especially Alan