Competition 3386 invited you to submit poems about the domestic arrangements at the White House. The idea was to inspire some visions of what goes on behind the official scenes – oh to be a fly on the East Wing wall. MAGA hats off to Frank McDonald, Elizabeth Kay, Daniel Pukkila, Nicholas Lee, Tom Adam,
For Competition 3385, with Valentine’s Day looming, you were invited to submit a passage in which one well-known character from literature goes on a date with another. There was a very full inbox, with enough excellent entries to fill weeks’ worth of competitions. It’s tempting to think that some of these imaginative pairings would have
For Competition 3384, since this issue appears on the first of the month, you were invited to submit a short story featuring someone who is a slave to superstition. Every corner of the country used to have its own folkloric behaviours that have now been forgotten (one wonders why salt and mirrors and magpies etc stuck).
In Competition 3383 you were invited to submit a Tripadvisor-type review by an alien who has visited Earth for the first time. Frank Upton pointed out that it could have been titled ‘Mostly Harmless’, Ford Prefect’s entire entry for Earth in The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The submissions were full of inventive detail and
For Competition 3382 you were invited to write a poem to mark this day, officially the dreariest of the year. (This year, as a few pointed out, it doubles as Inauguration Day. Things can only get better!) Responses ranged from Tracy Davidson’s ‘It’s just a Monday. You’ll be fine’ to Sylvia Fairley’s despairing ‘When will
In Competition 3381 you were invited to write a proposal for the rebranding of a well-known product/entity to aim it at an entirely different market. It was of course inspired by Jaguar’s gender-fluid relaunch ad, which has already somehow faded into distant memory by now. The idea here was to rebrand an existing thing rather
In Competition 3380 you were invited to send in your predictions for 2025 in verse form. The entries suggested that not everyone is enchanted at the prospect of what the year may have in store. But absurdity flourished too, as in Ralph Goldswain’s fantasy that Keir Starmer will enter Eurovision in a glittery suit, while
Comp. 3379 invited you to submit a contribution to a collection of Christmas recipes by fictional characters. This is a festive version of one you made earlier, and it turned out well again. There were a couple of Ancient Mariners and Macbeth covens – special mention for Max Ross’s Christmas cauldron with its ‘badger’s head and reindeer’s
In Comp. 3377 you were invited to write a version of ‘Ozymandias’ for the future. (The original, which obviously is for all time, arose from a contest between Shelley and Horace Smith to write a poem with that title.) The idea was to elicit responses to the US election, and the President-elect does feature heavily,
In Competition 3376, prompted by news that avocado bathrooms are back in vogue, you were invited to compose poems about interior decor trends of yesteryear. Reading them, bubble chairs and spider plants swam before my eyes. Jane Smillie’s list deserves a mention: Artex and lava lamps, bamboo and tie dye,Pop art and sideboards and stereo
In Competition 3374 you were invited to write an ode to autumn. There was bathos amid the beauty. I regret not finding room for Alan Millard’s ‘Season of musts’, Elizabeth Kay’s garden musings, Joseph Houlihan’s paean to the blazing hills, Nicholas Lee on what Keats could do with ‘rotting vapes arranged about the scene’, and
In Comp. 3373 you were invited to mull on a line that Sigmund Freud almost certainly did not say, ‘Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar’, substituting another object if it seemed apt. In the event there was plenty about cigars as substitutes and not so much about their substitutes as substitutes. A word in praise
For Competition 3372 you were invited to submit a prose-style mash-up of Jilly Cooper and another famous writer. The entries were very amusing, though a handful were a little too pornographic for publication. Some of you seemed regrettably unfamiliar with the works of Cooper while others seemed to err in the other direction. I anticipated
Competition 3371 invited you to rewrite the lyrics of ‘Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off’ to be sung not by Fred and Ginger but by another mismatched pair. Trump and Harris cropped up the most, while Joseph Houlihan deserves a mention for his version (‘I’m a Zoomer, you’ve a Boomer’s/ Problematic sense of humour…’). Those
Competition 3370 invited poems about the predicament of the Nasa astronauts stranded on the ISS – thanks to Paul Freeman for this suggestion. There was a wide range of ideas about how they could use their time, from self–improvement to… other things. Due to a different space issue, many good entries had to be jettisoned,
In Comp 3369 you were invited to write about the recent underwear storm of Chongqing, or some other freak event, as if it had happened centuries ago and become legend. The entries were wonderfully imaginative, though they dangled some grim visions of the future. It pains me not to squeeze in David Silverman’s poem, so
In Comp 3368 you were invited to update a well-known story from the Bible to make it ‘speak to’ life in 2024. There were a few Good Samaritans, Prodigal Sons and Cana weddings, and a splendid trio of Noahs. A special mention goes to David Silverman’s version of Psalm 23, which didn’t fit the remit
In Competition 3367 you were invited to write a formal poem about the Brothers Gallagher (Noel and Liam). This comp was set before we had quite reached Oasis saturation point; possibly we’re beyond that now. There were more entries than usual and they were roughly equally split between those that expressed great joy at the
Competition 3366 took inspiration from the Bandar-log in The Jungle Book, those monkeys who chant: ‘We are great. We are free. We are wonderful. We are the most wonderful people in all the jungle! We all say so, and so it must be true.’ You were invited to riff on this last sentence. Donald Trump
In Competition 3365 you were invited to submit an extract from a PhD about an aspect of street culture. Obviously this was inspired by Rachael Gunn, aka Raygun, the Australian academic/Olympic break-dancer who wrote a PhD on the cultural politics of breakdancing. This intro has to be short to make room for all the long
