Lucy Vickery

In Competition No. 3023 you were invited to submit cringeworthy portmanteau words. The word portmanteau was first used in this sense by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking Glass when Humpty Dumpty is explaining ‘Jabberwocky’ to Alice: ‘Well, “slithy” means “lithe and slimy”… You see it’s like a portmanteau — there are two meanings packed

In Competition No. 3022 you were invited to compose a safe poem that Boris Johnson could have on hand to quote from when out in the field. The recent kerfuffle caused by the Foreign Secretary’s murmured quotation of a few lines of Kipling’s poem ‘Mandalay’ during a visit to Shwedagon Pagoda in Myanmar led me

In Competition No. 3021 you were invited to compose terrifying lullabies. Lorca wondered why ‘Spain reserved the most potent songs of blood to lull its children to sleep, those least suited to their delicate sensibilities’, but the Scandinavians set the bar pretty high too: the unsoothing–sounding ‘Krakevisa’, from Norway, tells of gruesome uses for the

In Competition No. 3020 you were invited to submit the formula for a successful marriage courtesy of a well-known husband or wife in literature.   Some time ago, I challenged you to do the same on behalf of well-known poets, and if you like your advice brief and to the point, there’s always Ogden Nash’s

In Competition No. 3019 you were invited to submit a limerick describing a feat worthy of inclusion in Guinness World Records.   This assignment is a nod to my nine-year-old son, who is a big fan of astonishing facts. Every year, when he gets his mitts on the latest Guinness World Records, he follows me

In Competition No. 3018 you were invited to take your lead from Meik Wiking — CEO at the Happiness Research Institute and author of The Little Book of Hygge and The Little Book of Lykke — and provide an extract from your own Little Book of…. When I set this challenge, I had in mind

In Competition No. 3017 you were invited to submit a sonnet containing household tips.   You were on sparkling form this week and there were plenty of stylish, inventive entries to choose from. I was riveted by your recommendations and hope to put them to the test, though I might just take John Whitworth’s word

In Competition No. 3016 you were invited to submit an extract from the diary of the spouse of a high-profile political figure, living or dead.   It was a neat idea on the part of David Silverman to imagine Calpurnia’s journal in the style of Bridget Jones’s Diary, but hard to match the genius of

In Competition No. 3015 you were invited to submit a poem about Big Ben’s bongs.   The decision to remove the 13-tonne bell during the four-year restoration works on Elizabeth Tower has caused a right old ding-dong, with senior ministers, including the PM, joining the fray.   There were lots of poems about health and

In Competition No. 3014 you were invited to submit a love poem written by one contemporary politician to another.   Virginia Price Evans, writing on behalf of Jeremy Corbyn, channelled Betjeman in a bid to woo the PM: ‘Theresa M May, Theresa M May, I sigh and I die for our special day…’. Frank Upton’s

In Competition No. 3013 you were invited to submit a poem in praise or dispraise of August.   There was a whiff of collusion about the entry this week, so many references were there to rubbish television, rubbish weather, fractious kiddies, tired gardens, traffic jams; as Katie Mallett puts it: ‘A turgid time of torpor