In Competition No. 3121 you were invited to submit a song entitled ‘50 Ways to Leave the White House’. While the brief steered you in the direction of Paul Simon’s 1975 hit (the inspiration for whose distinctive chorus was a rhyming game played with his infant son), I didn’t specify that you had to
In Competition No. 3120 you were invited to submit a poem reflecting on the Apollo 11 moon landing written in the style of the poet of your choice. Cath Nichols’s enjoyable entry looked back on the lot of the Apollo wives through Wendy Cope’s acerbic eye. Nick MacKinnon was also an accomplished Cope impersonator:
In Competition No. 3119 you were invited to submit a poem about yellowhammers. This sparrow-sized songbird has inspired poetry from John Clare’s lovely ‘The Yellowhammer’s Nest’ to Robert Burns’s unlovely ‘The Yellow, Yellow Yorlin’ (‘But I took her by the waist, an’ laid her down in haste/, For a’ her squakin’ an’ squalin…’) You took
In Competition No. 3118, which was inspired by Joan Didion’s wonderful essay of that title, you were invited to submit a short story whose last line is ‘I can’t get that monster out of my mind’. Another notable American female essayist, Susan Sontag, has come in for a bit of stick in these pages over
In Competition No. 3117 you were invited to recast a famous political speech as a sonnet. Lots of you went for Elizabeth I’s address to the troops at Tilbury, but James Aske got there first in 1588, with a verse reworking that appeared in Elizabetha Triumphans, his celebration of the Armada victory. Well
In Competition No. 3116 you were invited to submit an extract from a government memo whose language would meet with the approval of Jacob Rees-Mogg. The Leader of the House recently sent his departmental staff a list of rules regarding grammar and vocabulary. The words ‘ongoing’ and ‘hopefully’ are out; imperial measurements are in. All
In Competition No. 3115 you were invited to submit a fable for the 21st century, complete with moral. James Michie, my predecessor in the judge’s seat, was a celebrated translator of fables and if you were looking for inspiration, and don’t speak French, his 1973 rendering of a selection by La Fontaine were described by
In Competition No. 3114 you were invited to submit estate agents’ details in the style of a well-known author. Highlights, in a cracking entry, included Jeremy Carlisle’s Hemingway: ‘Who needs a house? Certainly no real man known to this agency. Cabin by lakeside for sale… A cabin of strong oak-framed construction. The timbers are
In Competition No. 3113 you were invited to submit an acrostic poem about a politician in which the first letter of each line spells the name of that politician. While most of set your sights on modern-day politicians, David Silverman (as well as his poignant prizewinning haiku) penned a double-dactylic portrait of Caesar Augustus:
In Competition No. 3112 you were invited to submit an extract from Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Brexiteers. The title of this new addition to the G&S canon was, of course, a nod to The Gondoliers. But in an entry both serious and silly, full of wit and whimsy, you also plundered The Mikado (‘Four
In Competition No. 3111 you were invited to submit William Topaz McGonagall’s poetic response to Magaluf. The Tayside Tragedian was much taken with the town of Torquay, and wrote a poem singing its praises. But what would he have made of Shagaluf? He took a dim view of alcohol, if these lines are anything
In Competition No. 3110 you were invited to provide a version of the hokey-cokey filtered through the pen of a well-known writer. Thanks to George Simmers and C. Paul Evans, I now know that doing the hokey–cokey — said by some to have been composed by Puritans in the 18th century to mock the
In Competition No. 3109 you were invited to submit a short story entitled ‘The Last Bumble Bee’. The buff-tailed bumblebee, Bombus terrestris, was once voted Britain’s favourite insect, and this challenge seemed to strike a chord, inspiring stories that ranged from the topical to visions of a near-future of drone pollinators and enforced entomophagy. The
In Competition No. 3108 you were invited to submit a sonnet with the following end rhymes: son, mire, fire, won, run, re-inspire, attire, spun, choice, rise, voice, air, spare, unwise. The end rhymes are taken from Milton’s Sonnet 20, ‘Lawrence of virtuous father virtuous son’. Milton was the most political of poets, and many of
In Competition No. 3107 you were invited to provide an extract that is a mash-up of two well-known works of literature. The germ for this challenge was the discovery that Middlemarch was originally two separate works — a novel about the townspeople (the Vincys, Bulstrode, etc) and a short story called ‘Miss Brooke’, which focused
In Competition No. 3106 you were invited to submit a poem with an ingenious twist at the end. This challenge, a popular one, was deceptively tricky and while there were many accomplished and enjoyable entries, none of your twists truly blew my socks off. Douglas G. Brown, Max Gutmann and Martin Elster were unlucky runners-up.
In Competition No. 3105 you were invited to submit a fragment of commentary on the Women’s World Cup delivered by a figure from the world of fact or fiction, dead or alive. From Joseph Houlihan’s William McGonagall, who chronicles the Scottish team’s defeat at the boots of the Auld Enemy, to R.M. Goddard’s Samuel Beckett
In Competition No. 3104 you were invited to encapsulate the life story of a well-known person, living or dead, in three limericks. The limerick form was neatly summed up by the late Paul Griffin, long-time competitor and a regular winner on these pages: A limerick’s short and it’s slick; Like a racehorse it
In Competition No. 3103 you were invited to submit a Shakespearean soliloquy delivered by one of the contenders for the Tory leadership in which they consider their pitch for the top job. Though many chose to plug the gap created by Boris Johnson’s public reticence, there was a sprinkling of his fellow hopefuls. Most are
In Competition No. 3102 you were invited to submit a fan letter from one well-known person from the field of fact or fiction to another. Frank McDonald’s Lady Macbeth fist-bumps Nicola Sturgeon: ‘My dearest Nicola there is no need/ For me to pour my spirits in thine ear;/ Already you excel me in your