In Competition No. 3098 you were invited to submit a poem that can be read forwards and backwards, i.e. from the top down and the bottom up. I worried, as the entries trickled in, that I had set the bar too high, especially given the anguished comments that accompanied some of them. ‘This was
In Competition No. 3097 you were invited to submit a poem about Englishness in the style of a well-known poet. The line-up was mostly predictable — from Chesterton, so-called ‘prophet of Brexit’, through Larkin, Betjeman, Brooke, Housman and, of course, Kipling. But it was an American, Ogden Nash, whose pen portrait of us prompted
In Competition No. 3096 you were invited to submit a short story that ends ‘I feel like a half-eaten gorgonzola.’ Thanks to reader Mark O’Connor, who suggested that this observation which, in case you were wondering, comes from a letter written by Lytton Strachey to his elder brother James on 27 July 1908, might
In Competition No. 3095 you were invited to submit an elegy by a poet on another poet. The prompt for this challenge was ‘Adonais’, Shelley’s celebrated 55-stanza tribute to Keats. Frank McDonald imagined Keats responding in kind: My heart aches for you, brother Percy Bysshe, Who wept for me although my name was
In Competition No. 3094 you were invited to submit a ‘Sonnet Found in a Deserted Mad House’. G.K. Chesterton once observed that ‘poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese’. Well, not the anonymous author of the curious poem that inspired this challenge: line eight of ‘Sonnet Found in a Deserted Mad House’,
In Competition No. 3093 you were invited to submit an extract from a novel that chronicles the adult life of a well-known fictional hero from children’s stories. I enjoyed Jess McAree’s account of Paddington Bear’s Conrad-esque voyage — ‘evicted by Brexit, residence visa revoked’ — to the heart of darkness in deepest Peru. Hugh
In Competition No. 3092 you were invited to submit a spring villanelle. The villanelle lends itself to themes of loss and time passing, but the somewhat gloomy mood of the entry was offset by how well you rose to the form’s technical challenges. Congratulations all round, but especially to unlucky losers Noah Heyl, R.M. Goddard,
In Competition No. 3091 you were invited to submit toe-curlingly bad analogies. This is an idea shamelessly pinched from the Washington Post, whose contests have produced the impressively so-bad-they’re good ‘Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze’ (Chuck Smith) and ‘Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever’ (Jennifer Hart).
In Competition No. 3090 you were invited to submit a recently discovered lost poem by a well-known poet that makes us see him or her in a new light. Step forward, Philip Larkin, flower arranger, Slough fan John Betjeman and knickers-on-fire Emily Dickinson. Congratulations all round are in order this week, but I especially admired
In Competition No. 3089 you were invited to put your own spin on a weather forecast. The seed for the task came from the Master Singers’ take on a weather report, soothingly intoned in the style of an Anglican chant. But as one competitor reminded me there is also that 1970s gem, courtesy of
In Competition No. 3088 you were invited to submit a short story in the style of hard-boiled crime fiction set in the corridors of power. Raymond Chandler cast a long shadow over an entry bristling with stinging one-liners, dames, black humour and grandstanding similes laid on with a trowel. The mean streets of Westminster were
In Competition No. 3087 you were invited to submit haikicks. We already have short-form hybrids such as the clerihaiku (here’s one from Mary Holtby): Peter Palumbo Cries, ‘Mumbo-jumbo!’ and rails At the Prince of Wales And the limeraiku: A haiku will do For a limerick trick, called A Limeraiku. That was by
In Competition No. 3086 you were invited to submit a poem about the difficulty of writing a poem. In a far-larger-than-usual entry, A.H. Harker’s punchy couplet caught my eye: I’m stuck. Oh ****. Elsewhere there were nods to Wordsworth, Milton and ‘The Thought Fox’, Ted Hughes’s wonderful poem about poetic inspiration. The winners
In Competition No. 3085 you were invited to submit a poem in dispraise of Valentine’s Day. The day is said to have its roots in the Roman pagan festival of Lupercalia. But one scholar has proposed the theory that it was Chaucer who first designated 14 February as a day of love in his poem
In Competition No. 3084 you were invited to submit a poem entitled ‘Breaking up is hard to do’. From David Kilshaw’s Brexit-inspired twist on Neil Sedaka — ‘Commons, commons, down, dooby, doo, down down…’ — to Dorothy Pope’s poignant haiku — ‘plum blossom petals/ mistaken now for snowflakes/ so cold is your love’ —
In Competition No. 3083 you were invited to submit a poem or a short story that begins ‘It started with a tweet…’. Hats off to Philip Machin for an appropriately pithy submission: It started with a tweet — There’s nothing wrong in that — But, sadly, indiscreet: It ended with a cat. Elsewhere, in
In Competition No. 3082 you were invited to write a poem taking as your first line ‘Happy the man, and happy he alone’, which begins the much-loved eighth stanza of poet–translator Dryden’s rendition of Horace’s Ode 29 from Book III. At a time of year when we traditionally take stock and have a futile
In Competition No. 3081 you were invited to supply a parable rewritten in the style of a well-known author. Like Milton, many of you seemed taken with the Parable of the Talents. Here is Sylvia Fairley channelling Mark Haddon: ‘He gave five talents to one, that’s 14,983 shekels, and two to the next, 5,993 shekels.
In Competition No. 3080 you were invited to supply an elegy on a piece of obsolete technology. Thanks to Paul A. Freeman for suggesting this challenge — there’s nothing like a blast of nostalgia to usher in the new year. Sinclair C5s, faxes, floppy discs, typewriters; all were eloquently hymned. I admired Hamish Wilson’s elegy
In Competition No. 3079 you were invited to supply a new anthem to welcome 2019, starting with the first line of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and continuing in your own way. ‘Is not the Scotch phrase “Auld lang syne” exceedingly expressive?’ wrote Robert Burns to his friend Frances Dunlop in 1788, referring to the words