In Competition No. 2726 you were asked for a modern version of ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ taking as your first line ‘On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love sent to me…’ and continuing for a further twelve. Perhaps inevitably there was a fair amount of repetition in the entry: plenty of leakers
In Competition No. 2725 you were invited to supply the sales particulars for planet Earth. ‘Need a home where you can really spread yourself?’ asks George Simmers. ‘It’s the ideal residence for the adventurous virus with an urge to propagate. There’s a comfily warm and humid climate in most parts of the planet (And it’s
In Competition No. 2724 you were invited to supply a poem in which the initial letters of each line read down the page reproduce the last line. Though some of you clearly relish competitions of this kind (check out Frank McDonald’s double-paracrostic in the winning line-up), there was the inevitable rumble of protest in the
In Competition No. 2723 you were invited to supply an updated version of Wordsworth’s ‘Upon Westminster Bridge’. A reading of the sonnet on Westminster Bridge in September 2002, to commemorate its 200th anniversary, was all but drowned out by the roar of the rush hour. A far cry, then, from Wordsworth’s view of a slumbering
In Competition No. 2722 you were invited to supply an all-purpose poem for state occasions. ‘What a strange competition,’ writes Elizabeth Llewellyn-Smith, ‘when the prize must inevitably go to Wendy Cope for her existing poem under the same title! Who is going to beat that one?’ Good point, Miss Llewellyn-Smith; Wendy Cope’s wry and witty
In Competition No. 2721 you were invited to supply a short story incorporating the following: ‘rebarbative’, ‘solipsistic’, ‘lapidary’, ‘consequential’, ‘plangent’, ‘gibbous’. It was an impressive postbag with only the occasional stilted moment — you displayed considerable ingenuity in weaving the given words into a plausible and entertaining narrative. I was sorry to have to disqualify
In Competition No. 2720 you were invited to supply a piece of prose written by a well-known author working in an unlikely context. Thanks to Brian Moore for drawing my attention to Samuel Beckett’s flirtation with a career in grocery trade journalism, as revealed in the great man’s recently published volume of letters: ‘I see
In Competition No. 2719 you were invited to imagine that a well-known literary character of your choice had spilled the beans to a tabloid and to supply the resulting front-page story, including headline. I liked Virginia Price Evans’s paternity shocker: ‘I was Scrooge’s love child’, says Tiny Tim. Una McMorran, John Samson and Mike Morrison
In Competition No. 2718 you were invited to submit an account, in verse, of a medical procedure undergone. The inspiration for this assignment, was James Michie’s characteristically witty and well-made ‘On Being Fitted with a Pace-Maker’: ‘What with sex and fags and liquor,/ Silly old mulish heart,/ Dear unregenerate ticker,/ You needed a kick start’.
In Competition No. 2717 you were invited to supply a poem expressing distaste for something or someone widely considered to be beautiful. You poured scorn on Paris, daffodils, Michelangelo and Alan Bennett’s plays. Newborns were also a popular target. Here is Melissa Balmain giving it both barrels: ‘You can dress it in taffeta, ribbon and
In Competition No. 2716 you were invited to supply the gripping final 150 words of the first instalment of a serial thriller. Charles Reade, now mostly forgotten but ranked with Dickens in his day, summed up the art of the cliffhanger thus: ‘Make ’em cry, make ’em laugh, make ’em wait — exactly in that
In Competition No. 2715 you were invited to condense the plot of a well-known novel into 16 lines or fewer. In the interest of making space for the winners, I will follow your lead and keep it brief. Honourable mentions to G. McIlraith, Robert Schechter and Michael Grosvenor Myer, who pulled off the impressive feat
In Competition No. 2714 you were invited to supply a poem that begins ‘’Twas brillig…’ and continue, in the spirit of Lewis Carroll, using your own neologisms. ‘Jabberwocky’ has, of course, spawned countless parodies and been translated into many tongues. Frank L. Warrin’s frabjous French version, ‘Le Jaseroque’, appeared in the New Yorker in 1931.
This was an enjoyable comp to judge: I have some sympathy with the actress Celia Imrie’s (who played Mrs M) view that, given the current trend towards the use of dull and overused verbal short cuts, the much-mocked Malaprop’s attempts to improve herself by expanding her vocabulary are actually rather creditable. Printed below are the
In Competition No. 2712 you were invited to come up with your own additions to the ever-lengthening list of modern maladies. The assignment was prompted by reports in the Daily Mail and New York Times of the growing epidemic of Fear of Missing Out. Scourge of Generation Facebook, FOMO has at its roots the relentless
In Competition No. 2711 you were invited to cook up a recipe for marital bliss on behalf of a poet of your choice. It was agony to whittle an especially fine entry down to the half-dozen printed below. Inevitably, some good ’uns missed out. Space permits only a hearty congratulatory slap on the back all-round.
In Competition No. 2710 you were invited to supply a poem reflecting on travelling by Tube. Not something, perhaps, that would inspire many of us to heights of lyricism, though T.S. Eliot evokes subterranean travel to powerful effect in Four Quartets. Here he is, in ‘East Coker’, on the experience of stopping in a tunnel,
Competition: Dead end In Competition No. 2709 you were invited to take as your opening line ‘When I am dead, cremate me’ and continue, in verse, for up to a further 15. This assignment was suggested by Frank McDonald and inspired by an exchange in the film Wilde between Queensberry and Wilde. Asked by Queensberry,
In Competition No. 2708 you were invited to submit an obituary of either God or Homo sapiens. There is space only to congratulate the winners, printed below, who get £25 each, and to share this delightful and pertinent limerick by Gerard Benson: There was nothing, then dinosaurs, then There were mammals and finally men, Who
‘To ______, or not to ______, that is the question…’ In Competition No. 2707 you were invited to fill in the blanks and continue for up to a further 15 lines. The challenge elicited a topical response from many competitors — ‘to hack or not to hack…’ agonised George Simmers — and dilemmas of the