In Competition No. 2767 you were invited to imagine what the ‘famous last words’ of any well-known real or fictional character, alive or dead, might be/have been. Voltaire’s parting shot, when invited on his deathbed to forswear Satan, is purported to have been: ‘This is no time to make new enemies.’ Oscar Wilde’s final flourish
In Competition No. 2766 you were invited to submit a poem about a phobia. John Samson’s account of what strikes me as a perfectly reasonable fear of Ikea flatpacks stood out in what was another cracking entry. Bill Greenwell, Brian Allgar, Josephine Boyle and W.J. Webster also shone. The prizewinners are printed below and rewarded
In Competition No. 2765 you were invited to fill in the gap in ‘The Last —— on Earth’, and to submit a short story of that title. The challenge produced an excellent entry. I very much enjoyed J. Seery’s engaging opening: ‘The events at the Cheltenham supermarket at the end of the 24th century inducing
In Competition No. 2764 you were invited to provide an example of a Spectator columnist stepping into a fellow columnist’s shoes. It was a smallish entry by comparison with recent weeks and the standard was somewhat uneven. Deborah Ross proved a popular if elusive target. You struggled valiantly to capture her voice but no one
In Competition No. 2763 you were invited to submit a poem that is composed of lines taken from well-known poems, with no more than one line taken from any single poem. This was a brute of a challenge, but it did pull in the crowds. Semi-nonsense was fine as long as it was amusing but
In Competition No. 2762 you were invited to leap on to the latest literary bandwagon and submit an extract from a racy retelling of a classic work of literature. There was a finely calibrated mix of gusto and restraint in the entry and I regretted not having space for Alan Millard’s saucy Great Expectations (‘“Es-Tel-La,”
In Competition No. 2760 you were invited to submit an example of the kind of treacly inspirational poetry that adorns the office walls of a life coach and might be quoted by motivational speakers. Banality and triteness are not as easy to churn out as you might think. ‘I found this extraordinarily difficult,’ confessed Gerard
In Competition No. 2759 you were invited to submit a well-known poem rewritten by another well-known poet. You were outstandingly good this week and there are lots of unlucky losers. Honourable mentions to Graham King, Janet Kenny, Jerome Betts, Barbara Smoker and Gerard Benson and a hearty pat on the back all round. Those printed
In Competition No. 2758 you were invited to submit a horoscope for Cancer or Leo written by a well-known literary figure past or present. I regretted not having space for William Danes-Volkov’s horoscopic Hemingway: ‘Maybe someone else will listen to you in the cold air of Friday in the high mountains, or maybe money will
In Competition No. 2757 you were invited to introduce a note of unwelcome reality into a song from a musical. Thanks to Brian Allgar for suggesting this corker of a competition, which attracted a large entry. You might have taken as your model ‘Pore Jud is Daid’ from Oklahoma!, which, as Josephine Boyle points out,
In Competition No. 2756 you were invited to submit your contribution to the booming genre of Scandinavian crime fiction. Guidance is at hand courtesy of Barry Forshaw, author of Death in a Cold Climate: A Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction, who has compiled a list of ten tips on how to write a masterpiece of
In Competition No. 2755 you were invited to submit an ‘Ode to rain’. No doubt you saw this one coming, what with monsoon June and July’s 50 shades of grey skies. In any case, the lively and entertaining postbag the challenge elicited was certainly a welcome antidote to the ongoing misery of being semi-housebound or
In Competition No. 2754 you were invited to submit an example from the Selected Poems of a contemporary politician. Politician-poets have met with varying degrees of success. While Jimmy Carter’s efforts prompted literary heavyweight Harold Bloom to pronounce him ‘in my judgment literally the worst poet in the United States’, the youthful dabblings of Barack
In Competition No. 2753 you were invited to submit a new national anthem for Greece. The entry was split between those who present Greece’s woes as being mostly self-inflicted and a more sympathetic bunch, who acknowledge the wider forces that may have helped to bring this once great nation to its knees. Both camps are
In Competition No. 2752 you were invited to submit a short story ending with the phrase: ‘It is not all pleasure, this exploration.’ Dr Livingstone’s pronouncement, written in 1873 a few days before his wretched death, is putting it mildly. His final days had been plagued by pneumonia, malaria, foot ulcers, piles, rotting teeth, leeches,
In Competition No. 2751 you were invited to paint a portrait in verse of Ladies’ Day at Royal Ascot. In his Turf column last year, Robin Oakley wondered what the poet who, in 1823, described ‘the Thursday goings-on as “Ladies Day …when the women, like angels, look sweetly divine”’ would make of today’s proceedings. Well,
In Competition No. 2750 you were invited to submit a poem in praise of one of the deadly sins. The challenge was prompted by the following surprising admission by Taki in a High Life column earlier this year: ‘Lust, gluttony, pride, wrath and sloth I am rather proud to be guilty of, especially the first
In Competition No. 2743 you were invited to submit a recipe as it might have been written by an author of your choice. Kafka’s Soup, a complete history of world literature in 14 recipes by Mark Crick gave me the idea for this challenge. It contains such gastronomic delights as Cheese on Toast à la
In Competition No. 2742 you were invited to take as your first line ‘Dear Lord the day of eggs is here…’, which is the opening to Amanda McKittrick Ros’s poem ‘Eastertide’, and continue, in a similarly bad vein, for up to 16 lines. Described in the Oxford Companion to Irish Literature as ‘uniquely dreadful’, McKittrick
In Competition No. 2741 you were invited to submit an extract from the libretto of an opera that pays homage to the town of your choice. The Lottery-funded operatic venture Swindon: the Opera, which inspired the comp, catapulted that unlovely town into the cultural spotlight, and this assignment was meant to be an exercise in