Competition

In Competition No. 2662 you were invited to submit a poem composed in the midst of a travel hold-up. The entry, a magnificent collective letting-off-of-steam, was peppered with exasperated references to apoplectic rage, bursting bladders and bickering children but these were tempered by those who acknowledged that there are benefits in being forced to take

In Competition No. 2661 you were invited to submit a short story entitled ‘The Day of Doom’. As Google will tell you in a trice, the title is that of an epic poem about Judgment Day by the 17-century New England minister Michael Wigglesworth. Puritans lapped up its florid account of a wrathful God meting

Lucy Vickery presents the latest competition In Competition No. 2660 you were invited to submit a poem in praise of a bodily part that has been overlooked by poets. You turned out in force to celebrate the unsung heroes of our anatomy. Sonnets to the spleen rubbed shoulders with paeans to the pancreas and odes

In Competition No. 2659 you were invited to take the title of a well-known novel and write an amusing poem with the same title. There are some long lines this week, which leaves space only to mention unlucky losers Mae Scanlan and Max Ross. The winning six get £25 each; Frank McDonald nabs £30. Anna

In Competition No. 2658 you were invited to submit a bedroom scene written by a novelist who would not normally venture into such territory. A wise choice, it seems: even literary giants come a cropper when writing about sex. John Updike was shortlisted four times for one of Britain’s least coveted literary prizes, the Literary

In Competition No. 2657 you were invited to imagine what merry band Chaucer might bring together if he were writing today. It was another bumper entry this week, and you fell into two camps. There were those who reasoned that were Chaucer writing today he’d probably use modern English. Others, though, couldn’t resist the lure

In Competition No. 2656 you were invited to submit a dialogue between two well-known figures from different centuries, each using the argot of the time. You responded to this challenge with your usual verve and skill, and I especially liked Frank McDonald’s conversation between Julius Caesar and Churchill (Templumcollis) on the trials of wartime leadership.

In Competition No. 2655 you were asked to submit a poem about a mundane household task such as boiling an egg or changing a light bulb in the style of a poet of your choice. Pastiche always pulls in the crowds, and true to form the entries came flooding in. Commendations go to Virginia Price

In Competition No. 2654 you were asked to submit a piece of lively and plausible prose, the first word beginning with ‘a’, the second with ‘b’, and so on, throughout the alphabet. Then to start again from ‘a’ and continue up to a maximum of 156 words. This was a real stinker, I admit. There

In Competition No. 2653 you were invited to submit a poem, written in the metre of Longfellow’s ‘The Song of Hiawatha’, describing Hiawatha’s experiences at his computer. Longfellow’s epic, with its readily imitated metre, has spawned countless parodies. This is from the Literary Digest in 1925: ‘Have you ever noticed verses/ Written in unrhymed trochaics/

In Competition No. 2652 you were invited to submit an extract from the autobiography of a sportsman packed with as many clichés as possible. The World Cup will no doubt provide a feast of words and phrases that have had the life squeezed out of them, as well as ample opportunity to mock players and

In Competition No. 2651 you were invited to submit limericks that are also tongue-twisters. Thanks to J. Seery for suggesting this fiendish assignment. It is not easy to produce a true tongue-twister within the confines of the meter and rhyme scheme of the limerick. Perhaps the suggestion was inspired by Lou Brooks’s Twimericks: The Book

In Competition 2650 you were invited to submit a letter from a publisher rejecting the Book of Genesis or Revelation. You lambasted both for a lack of coherent plot and narrative inconsistencies, and prescribed extensive editing. There were redeeming features, though: Paddy Briggs applauded the ‘geriatric sex narrative’ in Genesis, while J. Seery found much

In Competition 2649 you were invited to submit a news bulletin on the outcome of the general election delivered by a well-known figure from history. Well done, everyone: it was a strong entry and a pleasure to judge. Narrowly missing a place in the winning line-up were Bill Greenwell, J. Seery, Shirley Curran, P.C. Parrish

In Competition 2648 you were invited to recast Kipling’s ‘If’ addressed to women. The nation’s favourite poem (rescued from a wastepaper basket, to which Kipling had consigned it in disgust, and reassembled by his formidable wife) was famously branded as ‘sententious’ by Orwell, but has illustrious champions none the less. Geoffrey Wheatcroft  argues that ‘it

In Competition 2647 you were invited to invent new social types for the current decade. This assignment, which takes you into the terrain of anthropologists and marketing men, clearly failed to inspire, producing an entry of modest size that fell short of your usual standard. There were some harsh portraits of the digital generation. Josephine

In Competition 2646 you were invited to submit a poem that might have been included in T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Dogs. Many of you followed Eliot’s lead and used long lines, so space is limited. I will pause only briefly, then, to commend this week’s stellar runners-up — Frank Osen, Brian Murdoch,

In Competition 2645 you were invited to submit an example of impenetrable ministerial waffle. Lord Mandelson set the bar high with his bewildering statement, ‘Perhaps we need not more people looking round more corners but the same people looking round more corners more thoroughly to avoid the small things detracting from the big things the

In Competition 2644 you were invited to submit the views of an inanimate object, in verse, on its owner/s. Highlights of a large and entertaining entry included Gillian Ewing’s outraged iron — ‘She doesn’t use me half enough,/ But when she does she treats me rough…’ — and Mary Holtby’s unjustly accused oven, in fine

In Competition 2643 you were invited to submit what might have been just another dull news story from a local paper had you not spiced it up with a number of misprints. The wording of the challenge inevitably produced entries that were in a smutty vein and there were plenty of instances of ‘erection’ for