Lucy Vickery

In Competition No. 3192 you were invited to submit a short story that features an animal (or animals) taking revenge on humankind. The spur for this challenge was John Gray’s engaging and insightful book Feline Philosophy, which alerted me to Patricia Highsmith’s short story ‘Ming’s Biggest Prey’, about a Siamese cat who eliminates a human rival for his mistress’s affections. An inventive and lively entry included tales of vengeful snails, beavers and silverfish. Honourable mentions go to Moray McGowan, Timothy Clegg, Chris Ray, Nick Syrett and J. Harries. The winners are printed below and earn their authors £30. Bill Greenwell pockets a bonus fiver.

In Competition No. 3191 you were invited to submit a Shakespearean soliloquy reflecting on the news that the Bard has been cancelled by some US academics. Teachers in the States have called into question the centrality of Shakespeare in the English curriculum given that his works are, according to Amanda MacGregor, writing in the School Library Journal, ‘full of problematic, outdated ideas, with plenty of misogyny, racism, homophobia, classism, anti-Semitism, and misogynoir’. Some have seen this as yet another example of the tyranny of wokeness; others as a perfectly reasonable attempt to re-evaluate the role the Bard’s works should play in a 21st-century classroom. But what would the man himself have made of it all?

In Competition No. 3190 you were invited to submit the first paragraph of your least favourite type of novel. Sci-fi was the most well represented genre by a long way, with many thinking along similar lines. Here’s a flavour from Joe Houlihan: Not for the first time, Drod Vordant was struck by the ethereal beauty of the Butterfly Nebula. Even at 178.

In Competition No. 3189 you were invited to submit a poem about a favourite smell. This challenge certainly seemed to strike a chord — not surprising, perhaps, given the looming threat of Covid-induced anosmia. As Brian Murdoch puts it: Be ever grateful for your sense of smell!Treat no aroma with the least disdain,In case some virus makes you so unwellThat you can never smell a thing again… Other star turns, in an entry that was a delight to judge, were Adrian Fry (‘Most of all, I crave the pong/ of a layabed, copperhead girl gone wrong…’), Chris Ramsey’s Wordsworthian tribute to the smell of frying bacon and Paul Brown’s clever twist on Herrick. Commendations also go to David Silverman, Nick MacKinnon and Sarah Drury.

In Competition No. 3188, a challenge designed to make us all feel better about the looming prospect of another enforced staycation, you were invited to submit a postcard from a friend on holiday abroad that makes you relieved you aren’t there. Whenever I find myself dreaming of a trip to see the Northern Lights, I console myself with ‘Northern Dark’, Geoff Dyer’s hilarious account of the crushing disappointment of his pilgrimage to the Svalbard Archipelago (only on the return journey do the stars of the show, those ‘swirling geysers of psychedelic green’, make an appearance — but on the opposite side of the aircraft from which Dyer and his wife are sitting).

In Competition No. 3187 you were asked to provide a sea shanty on a topical theme. This challenge was an invitation to follow in the slipstream of Nathan Evans, the postal worker and TikTokker whose rendition of the 19th-century whaling song ‘The Wellerman’ went viral and gave rise to #ShantyTok. Among the multiple variations on ‘What shall we do with the unused Pfizer!’, Hugh King, Richard Spencer and Alanna Blake stood out, as did John Priestland’s homage to Handforth planning committee’s magisterial Jackie Weaver (‘There’s Councillor Brian disrupting the meeting,/ Way aye, kick him off Zoom!’) and Alan Millard’s to Captain Tom. The winners take £30 each.

In Competition No. 3186 you were invited to supply an acrostic poem praising or dispraising a public figure, in which the word/s spelled out by the first letter of each line directly contradicts what the poem is saying. In an era of fake news, rampant conspiracy theories and ever-spiralling paranoia, acrostics are having a moment: resignation letters written to Donald Trump, into which the words ‘Resist’ and ‘Impeach’ had been smuggled, subsequently went viral. I enjoyed Adrian Fry’s double-edged hymn of praise to Adam Curtis (‘Pretentious tripe’).

In Competition No. 3185 you were invited to compose a sonnet called ‘England in 2021’. The challenge was inspired by Shelley’s political sonnet ‘England in 1819’, in which he paints a scathing picture of a broken country, rotten to the core, and rages against king (‘old, mad, blind, despised, and dying’), aristocracy, parliament, church and the army. Two hundred years on, the view is not much better but, as in Shelley’s closing couplet, there were some glimmers of hope. Honourable mentions go to Joe Crocker, Josephine Boyle, Nicholas Whitehead, Frank McDonald, David Shields and Nicholas Hodgson. The best of a varied and excellent bunch are printed below and earn their authors £20 apiece.

In Competition No. 3184 you were invited to tell a joke in verse form. This challenge, suggested by a reader and coming at a time when we could all do with a laugh, drew a large and jolly entry. As space is short, I pause only to salute stellar performances all around before handing over to the winners, who snaffle £25. The barman had seen many people walk into his bar,He’d met with folk of all persuasions, nations near and far.They’d ordered every type of drink, they’d ordered them with puns,he’d seen celebrities walk in, as well as ghosts and nuns.But never had he seen a pair stroll in just like these two;Helvetica and Times New Roman, print in letters true.They strolled up arm-in-arm and asked the barman for a drink.

In Competition No. 3183 you were invited to submit a short story entitled ‘My Year of Living [insert adverb of your choice here]’. Highlights in a varied and engaging entry included John Priestland’s ‘Year of Living Paradoxically’, which combined elements of Hilbert’s Infinite Hotel Paradox with the Grandfather Paradox (think Back to the Future), and Janine Beacham’s teleportation of Henry David Thoreau to the 21st century for a ‘Year of Living Deliberately’. The winners — led by Adrian Fry, whose nonsense-inspired story captures -especially well the discombobulation of living in a world where all bets are off — earn £25 each.

In Competition No. 3182 you were invited to rewrite a famous piece of light verse with a dirge-like, hieratic tone (as if we need any more doom and gloom). Robert Schechter put a downer on light verse supremo Ogden Nash’s pithy ‘Reflections on Ice-Breaking’, ‘Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker’: Time is a burden we mortals must carry,And in the great darkness our lives are a flicker,So heed me: though sweets may seduce, do not tarry.Life’s candle is shrinking, and liquor is quicker. The winners earn £25 each. Bill Greenwell pockets a bonus fiver. And so we recall, so saith the LORD, an ancient, Whom shall we praise, praise for his whiskers, For the whiskers proclaim his age, For they are grey in the way of righteousness, And Lo!

In Competition No. 3181 you were invited to submit a letter by a publisher rejecting a well-known literary classic. The authors of Lolita and The Bell Jar (‘an ill-conceived, poorly written novel’) are among distinguished recipients of multiple rejections. And T.S. Eliot famously turned down George Orwell’s Animal Farm (its shortcomings included the wrong type of pig). Orwell came in for a bit of a battering in the entry, too; Barry Baldwin wasn’t wasting any ink with his take-down: ‘DOUBLEPLUS-UNGOOD’. Many entrants (though not all) wrote from the point of view of a contemporary publisher, and works were often rejected on the grounds that their world-view, lacking in inclusivity of one kind or another, clashes with prevailing cultural orthodoxies.

In Competition No. 3180 you were invited to submit a Belloc-esque cautionary tale featuring a high-profile public figure. Cautionary Tales for Children, published in 1907 and ‘designed for the admonition of children between the ages of eight and fourteen years’, featured such cruel and hideous comeuppances as being eaten, feet upwards, by a lion and being burnt to a crisp. Yours were generally rather less grisly, but props to Chris Ramsey for his pay-off to the sad story of Dom, who ended up whacked like a mole: ‘The moral is: for all their dash,/ All Spads, like spuds, end up as mash.

In Competition No. 3179 you were invited to submit a Christmas hit single rewritten as a sonnet. This seasonal challenge was embraced with gusto, and highlights, in a magnificent entry, ranged from Ian Barker’s version of Jona Lewie’s catchy and affecting ‘Stop the Cavalry’ to Basil Ransome-Davies’s reworking of the peerless Eartha Kitt’s innuendo-laden ‘Santa Baby’. Commendations also go to Matthew Wright, Ross McAlpine, Mary McLean, Sarah Hill, David Silverman and Richard Spencer, but the festive winnings of £20 apiece are awarded to the authors of the sonnets printed below. The trials of the year have done nothing to diminish your wit and skill; thank you for all your submissions, which it has been a pleasure to judge.

In Competition No. 3178 you were invited to submit an extract from a Dickensian novel based around the name of someone in political life. Inspired titles, in a modestly sized but accomplished entry, included A Tale of Two Pritis (David Silverman and Joe Houlihan) and Paul A. Freeman’s Barnier Fudge. The winners below take £25 each, except Bill Greenwell who earns a bonus fiver. Mr. Shapps, Sir. At your service, Mr. Shapps. Always a toothsome smile, a twinkle, a child in perpetuity. Mr. Shapps with his electric bicycle, his hair rising happily from his head. Mr. Shapps taking his turn on the platform, waving away the engine, his mouth ajar, happy in his work. Locomotion, he announces, is a necessary necessity. We must travel, Sir, from Q to Z, and in good time.

In Competition No. 3177 you were invited to submit a well-known fictional person’s view of their author. Highlights in a varied and engaging entry included Janine Beacham’s Mrs Malaprop: ‘I am indelibly proud to be the procreation of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, a calibrated writer of plagues…’; Anthony Blanche’s withering verdict on Evelyn Waugh as told to J.C.H. Mounsey: ‘My dear, what can I say? An absolute horror. Snobbish of course, being trade through and through.

In Competition No. 3176 you were invited to write a poem to a city. This challenge was inspired by both Simon Armitage’s letter to London (‘Dear London, I’ve applied for a restraining order requiring that you remain 200 miles from Huddersfield at all times…’), and William McGonagall’s inadvertently hilarious ‘Jottings of New York’, of which a snippet: Oh mighty City of New York! you are wonderful to behold, Your buildings are magnificent, the truth be it told, They were the only things that seemed to arrest my eye, Because many of them are thirteen storeys high. The Tayside Tragedian’s voice lives on in entries from John O’Byrne and Alanna Blake, among others. Plaudits, too, to R.M.

In Competition No. 3175 you were invited to submit a prequel to a well-known poem. C. Paul Evans’s opening to a prequel to the nation’s favourite poem caught my eye: My publishers had telephoned to askFor something inspirational and spiffy:I told them I would think about the task,But mentioned I was feeling somewhat iffy… As did Bill Greenwell’s Stevie Smith: Nobody saw him, the dry man, But there he lay frowning: Life was much much harder than he thought, Not-bathing but browning. Other standout performers, in a stellar entry, were Jayne Osborn, Iain Morley, Chris Ray, Nick MacKinnon, Max Gutmann, Robin Helweg-Larsen, G.N. Crockford and M.F. Shardlow. The winners, led by Alex Steelsmith’s ‘This Be The Prequel’, net £25.

In Competition No. 3174 you were invited to write a poem in which each line begins with the letters A S D F G H J K L Z X C V B N M, in that order. One entry began: ‘Asinine/ Stupid/ Dumb/ Fatuous…’, and continued in a similar vein; a comment, perhaps, on my decision to set this comp. But despite the rumbles of discontent, the challenge produced a terrific showing: varied, witty and technically accomplished. Honourable mentions go to Shawn Chang, Hugh King, R.M. Goddard and Brian Murdoch. In a hotly contested week, the winners below snaffle £25 each. Auden loved a dying fall,Spender not so much.Dryden was — well, rather dry, Frost wall-eyed and such. Ginsberg? Whitman’s long-lost son,Howling like a pup. Joyce sold Pomes Penyeach.

In Competition No. 3173 you were invited to give a fresh twist to a well-known single line of poetry by adding a line of your own to it. This was a wildly popular competition, and my inbox was flooded with entries. Many of you were thinking along the same lines, which produced a fair amount of duplication. There were lots of variations on this topical adaptation of Wordsworth, courtesy of John Priestland: ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud,/ As household mixing’s not allowed.’ And on this new slant on Milton, from Iain Morley — ‘Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new/To tear them up for dear old HS2.’ D.A.