In Competition No. 2413 you were invited to supply a poem such as might have been written by the Revd Spooner. William Archibald Spooner, the myopic, albino warden of New College, was not, as I had always imagined, a Victorian figure: his wardenship was 1903–24 and he died in 1930. As an educationist he would
In Competition No. 2412 you were invited to supply a ‘jabberwocky’ poem beginning ‘’Twas brillig…’and containing new words of your own invention. By ‘jabberwocky’, which was deliberately lower case, I meant no more than surreal. I wasn’t inviting you to follow Carroll’s monster-slaying scenario, or his metrical scheme, only to match his inventiveness with neologisms
In Competition No. 2411 you were invited to supply a poem or piece of prose entitled ‘The Last Smoker on Earth’. William Danes-Volkov wrote to me, ‘Anyone attempting this competition should read Garrison Keillor’s brilliant and terrifying story “The Last Cigarette Smoker in America”.’ Terrifying too is Thomas Hood’s poem ‘The Last Man’, in which
In Competition No. 2410 you were provided with opening and closing words and invited to write a story with the above title. The given words were supposed to be the opening and closing ones of a Maclaren Ross story with this title, but owing to a clerical error, in other words my own foolish blunder,
In Competition No. 2409 you were invited to provide a vitriolic review of a generally acknowledged masterpiece by a critic at the time of its appearance. ‘Monsieur Flaubert is not a writer’ was Le Figaro’s stern verdict on Madame Bovary. The Odessa Courier greeted Anna Karenina with ‘Sentimental rubbish …Show me one page that contains
In Competition No. 2408 you were given an opening couplet — ‘Oh, plague of plagues! Wherever I turn, French tricks,/ French schemes, French morals, and French politics!’ — and invited to continue either in the modern or the 18th-century mode. The opening couplet came from a contributor to Fraser’s Magazine, a Tory journal, in the
In Competition No. 2407 you were invited to incorporate 12 words into a plausible piece of prose, using them not in an animal, vegetable or mineral sense. Inadvertently, I made this competition more difficult than the genre usually is by giving you fewer choices of alternative meanings to play with. Consequently I have been lenient
In Competition No. 2406 you were invited to write a nostalgic poem about commercial products or brand images that are no longer with us. ‘O my Brylcreem and my Trugel long ago!’ sighed Tony Dawson. ‘Just bring me my Seebakrascope,’ begged John Whitworth (for those of you too young to remember, this was a miniature
In Competition No. 2405 you were invited to write a poem in praise or dispraise of the month of August. ‘The English winter — ending in July,/ To recommence in August,’ grumbled Byron when he was particularly fed up with the island. On the other hand Day Lewis wrote a delightful poem, ‘A Windy Day
In Competition No. 2404 you were invited to supply a poem beginning, ‘I do not know much about gods; but …’, substituting, if you prefer, ‘dogs’ for ‘gods’. As I know almost nothing about either, I judged this with a benevolently neutral eye. I suspect that several of you who disclaimed much knowledge of dogs
In Competition No. 2403 you were invited to supply a poem lamenting the fate of a famous person in which bathos is the keynote. Bathos, or unintentionally falling flat, implies a hoped-for height to fall from. A poet like McGonagall whose verse is consistently bad is pathetic rather than bathetic, whereas Wordsworth could drop hundreds
In Competition No. 2402 you were invited to supply an imaginary example of the traditionally facetious, learned and topical last editorial article in a quality newspaper. ‘Aesop could have written this morality fable. And the millionaires who are not going to win the lottery tonight can comfort themselves with Schadenfreude, and the parable that life
In Competition No. 2401 you were invited to provide a dialogue in verse or prose between two parts of yourself at odds with each other. Hands up anyone who has never talked to themselves…. Not a hand? I thought so. And yet it’s odd that when one does it, it isn’t a dialogue. ‘For God’s
In Competition No. 2400 you were invited to write a sonnet picturing one of Hercules’ labours. I used the word ‘picturing’ with a purpose: I wanted you to be visual. I was thinking of the sonnets in Les Trophées (two describe vividly the Nemean and Stymphalian missions), written by José-Maria de Heredia, that gifted, Cuban-born
In Competition No. 2399 you were asked for a reply in blank verse by the maid addressed in Tennyson’s poem, ‘“Come down, O maid from yonder mountain height:/What pleasure lives in height?” the shepherd sang…’ You can only catch a glimpse of me this week, since my head is going to disappear behind the curtain
In Competition No. 2398 you were invited to write an entertaining piece of prose incorporating a dozen given cricketing terms, but using them in a non-cricketing sense. One competitor added a postscript: ‘I have not used the term “Chinaman” to refer to a native of that country as, according to Collins, that usage is now
In Competition No. 2397 you were invited to supply an acrostic poem, the first letter of each line to spell out TRAVEL TROUBLES. I had my share of these recently. The Saturday flight to Milan was cancelled. Our tickets were adjusted (incorrectly, it turned out) for Sunday. On Sunday the flight is cancelled again, but
In Competition No. 2396 you were invited to supply a description of a sporting event by an intellectually pretentious journo. ‘Khan the high priest fast uniting greatness and wealth in holy boxing matrimony’ — Owen Slot in the Times. But Gerard Benson has capped my example with a magnificent piece of tosh by Robbie Hudson
In Competition No. 2395 you were invited to write a rhymed witch’s spell to bring someone or something either good or ill. William Dalrymple in his excellent book From the Holy Mountain lists some quaint old Nestorian spells: ‘the anathema of the Angel Gabriel against the Evil Eye’, ‘a charm for binding the guns and
In Competition No. 2394 you were invited to supply a rhymed poem offering four parental vetoes on children’s behaviour, followed by four juvenile vetoes on parental behaviour. Exhausted and sleepless, back two days late due to botched air travel, I shall cut the cackle. The prizewinners, printed below, get £20 each, except W.J. Webster, who