Spectator competition winners: politically correct versions of works by unreconstructed male writers

In Competition No. 3289, you were invited to provide an extract from a politically correct version of a work by an unreconstructed male novelist or poet.

An honourable mention to Alex Steelsmith for his reimagining of ‘Song of Myself’ by Walt Whitman, celebrated poet but also author of the long-forgotten Manly Health and Training in which he prescribes a meat-only diet, naked sunbathing and the avoidance of the draining company of women. Here is a snippet:

My pronouns are They, Them and Theirs.
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

And to David Shields, who recasts Philip Larkin’s ‘High Windows’ for 21st-century sensibilities:

When I see two young people
And guess s/he/they is/are conducting
A meaningful relationship
With him/her/them, and taking

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Deedee McCarthy, Chris O’Carroll, Carolyn Beckingham and Bob Johnston also shone, but the £30 prize goes to the authors of the entries printed below.

The reaper’s privacy is prime
So I won’t stop and stare. I must
Remember that my happy gaze
Can be interpreted as lust.

It’s no concern of mine what words
The worker chooses for a song;
To walk on smartly by is best;
To stand and stare is clearly wrong.

Of course I should be guided by
What health and safety rules dictate.
It puts the reaper’s life at risk
To publicise her lonely state.

So I will try to be discreet
Lest I stir people’s ill intent.
To toil alone securely is
A labourer’s entitlement.

Frank McDonald/Wordsworth

It started, as triggering episodes often did, in Sir Walter Bullivant’s Whitehall office. ‘What do you know of the competing factions in the East, Hannay?’ he asked. I told him I could distinguish creed from ethnicity and had passed all requisite units of Unconscious Bias training. Sir Walter instructed me to blind hire a diverse team to get out there and empathically evaluate a German-sponsored uprising his network of informants – socially marginalised operatives all – had identified.