Spectator competition: write a poetic short story (plus: Philip Larkin’s version of Humpty-Dumpty)

The invitation to recast a nursery rhyme in the style of a well-known author attracted a large and lively entry that was evenly split between prose and poetry. In general, verse worked better, as reflected in the winning line-up below. (G.K. Chesterton did ‘Old King Cole’ as written by Tennyson, Browning, Whitman, Swinburne and Yeats, so you were in stellar company with this week’s task.) Commendations go to Chris Port, Mike Morrison, Max Ross, Nick MacKinnon, Adrian Fry and Mark Shelton. Here’s a taste of Mr Fry’s ‘There Was an Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe’ as Alan Bennett might have done it:

‘This being Sheffield before the proper provision of social housing, it was less this unusual accommodation that fascinated — a tan brogue, I recall — than her inability, as social workers now insist on understating the condition, to cope.’

The winners earn £25 each. Chris O’Carroll takes £30.

Chris O’Carroll/Edgar Allan Poe Once upon a sturdy tuffet sat a maid         the world calls Muffet, Dining on a wholesome bowl of dairy         oddments, curds with whey. On a sudden, just beside her, she espied         a loathsome spider; Cold abhorrence surged inside her.         She could find no words to say, No ejaculations suited to convey her         deep dismay, Not a single word to say.

Vile arachnids, large and hairy, tender         lactovores find scary, So the frighted maid abandoned all her         curds and all her whey. Muffet gazed upon the spinner of silk         traps to snare its dinner, Felt her vitals churn within her, knew         she could not stay and play. In the presence of this insect-eating         fiend she dared not stay. Up she sprang and ran away.

Alan Millard/John Bunyan He who would rodents three Spare from disaster, Let him, though blind they be, Bid them run faster. There’s naught so cruel in life Than some foul farmer’s wife Who wields her carving knife To maim a mouse tail.

True ’tis, that lacking pace, Three mice, unsighted, Struck thus while giving chase Now languish blighted. So, pilgrims, armed with knives, Forewarned of farmers’ wives, Strike down whoever strives To maim a mouse tail.

W.J. Webster/Ted Hughes Legs doubling as fingers, The spider felt its neat way Into a downspout’s black maw. Settled, it spun silk lashings To work as a homely abattoir. Tuned to a fly’s writhings It sensed no sluice until A bolt of water struck it down And out into the bright air. Then it was jetsam, grounded, Limbs and body a draggled tangle: It upped itself like a wet foal, Touched drying land and ran Frantic in its mortal panic Out of the open light And back inside the sheltering mouth.

Brian Allgar/Philip Larkin They fucked me up, those soldier chaps;         It may have been unwittingly, Or then again — who knows? — perhaps         The bastards had it in for me.

They glued me back as best they could,         But got it wrong; they stuck my nose Right up my arse, which isn’t good,         And testicles in place of toes.

So when they saw what they had done,         Did they apologise? Not half! They thought it all tremendous fun —         Even their horses had to laugh.

If you’re an egg, avoid great falls;         You’d be irreparably cracked. Take my advice: don’t sit on walls,         And try to keep your shell intact.

G.M. Davis/John le Carré Smiley shook out his umbrella before entering.

‘Raining,’ said the constable at the door. ‘Indeed pouring, if I may venture an opinion, sir.’

The old man lay in bed upstairs, making a gross, piggish noise. The room smelt of mothballs and a picture of Brighton Pavilion hung lopsidedly over the mantelpiece. A medic was already there.

‘Occipital damage,’ he said. ‘In lay terms, he bumped his head. Odd thing is, it seems to have happened after he went to bed.

‘He’s in a coma?’

‘Probably. He certainly couldn’t get up this morning We’ll know more later.’ ‘Snoring in a coma?’

‘That will happen if the airways become obstructed.’

Smiley watched the raindrops slide down the window, then vanish. It had the smell of one of Karla’s sandbaggers. Or was that too obvious? It could be a decoy, a trap. Either way, it would take all the tradecraft he had.

Martin Parker/Walter de la Mare Is there anybody there, said the Blackbird with a vengeful look in its eye, while the smell of its baking colleagues rose up from the royal game pie.

But nobody answered the Blackbird; no voice, downstairs or up, spoke out to admit to the plat du jour on which they would shortly sup.

But the greedy King in his counting-house and the pie-cook washing her smalls, plus the Queen with her bread and honey, had heard the Blackbird’s calls.

And they heard the screech of its fury, too, and the sound of beak on bone and how the birds began to sing when the pie-cook’s nose was gone.

Your next challenge is to pick a well-known poem and write a short story with the same title using the poem’s opening and closing lines to begin and end the story. Please email entries of up to 150 words to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 17 September.