Competition

In Competition 2830 you were invited to choose, from different authors, two characters who have the same job or position and give an excerpt of not more than 150 words from their conversation on meeting. The assignment brought forth an entertaining cast of literary pairings, with gentlemen’s gentlemen, sleuths, teachers and doctors featuring most strongly,

In Competition 2829 you were invited to imagine what Philip Larkin might have made of the news that Hull has been anointed 2017’s City of Culture. Despite its unpromising image, this city-of-culture-in-waiting has nurtured a wide range of creative talents: from poets such as Andrew Marvell and Stevie Smith, to the actor Tom Courtenay, the film

In Competition 2828 you were invited to submit a retrospective verse commentary on 2013. Reasons to be cheerful are, apparently, somewhat thin on the ground. Alanna Blake’s opening couplet captures the general mood of the entry: The year is past, it’s maybe best To let the poor thing lie at rest. The arrival of a

In Competition 2827 you were invited to submit a Christmas list, in verse, in the style of the poet of your choice.   This challenge called on you not only to pull off a convincing pastiche of a particular poet but also to come up with a plausible Christmas wish list for them.   There

In Competition 2826 you were invited to submit nonsense verse on a wintry theme. The line between sense and nonsense is a blurred one; certainly Carroll’s crazy world has a bonkers internal logic all of its own. But perhaps the best way into nonsense is to put the quest for sense aside for once and

In Competition 2825 you were invited to supply a poem for a well-known painting of your choice. The poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti was the inspiration behind this challenge. His sonnet ‘Found’ was written in 1881 as a companion to an unfinished oil painting of the same title on the theme of prostitution, which

In Competition 2824 you were invited to submit double clerihews about a well-known sporting figure past or present.   The clerihew was invented by Edmund  Clerihew Bentley as a bored schoolboy. His  son Nicolas subsequently came up with the double clerihew and trebles have been recorded. Other noted practitioners include Chesterton and Auden — and,

In Competition 2823 you were invited to submit a school essay or poem written at the age of eight by a well-known person, living or dead, entitled ‘My Pet’ . Those of you who chose to step into the childhood shoes of well-known writers faced the tricky challenge of pulling off an element of pastiche

In Competition 2822 you were invited to submit an extract from a scene from a contemporary soap opera (television or radio) as Shakespeare might have written it. The idea of filtering an aspect of popular culture through the lens of the Bard for comic effect is not a new one, of course. A recent example

In Competition 2821 you were invited to supply a poem that provides instruction or useful information. This challenge was, of course, a nod to Virgil, whose Georgics, a didactic poem spanning four books, is part agricultural manual, part political poem. Although it was published way back in 29 bc or thereabouts, its lessons can still

In Competition 2820 you were invited to supply a postscript to any well-known novel.   This challenge was suggested by a reader who drew my attention to Barbara Hardy’s neo-Victorian gem Dorothea’s Daughter and Other Nineteenth Century Postscripts, which includes afterwords to Little Dorrit and Mansfield Park. I hoped it might appeal to anyone who

In Competition 2819 you were invited to write a poem either in free verse mocking rhymed, metrical verse or in conventional verse mocking free verse.   Auden was no fan of vers libre: ‘If one plays a game, one needs rules, otherwise there is no fun.’ (D.H. Lawrence, he felt, was one of the few

In Competition 2818 you were asked to merge two literary classics and provide a synopsis of the new title. You obviously had great fun with this one. Frank Osen came up with Pollyanna Karenina: ‘A girl from New England is so relentlessly upbeat about her affair with a Russian aristocrat that he throws himself under

In Competition 2817 you were asked to provide a poem, in the manner of Harry Graham’s Perverted Proverbs, questioning the wisdom of a popular proverb. Graham was an immensely gifted lyricist and poet. In 1903, in the guise of one Col. D. Streamer, he published Perverted Proverbs: A Manual of Immorals for the Many, in

In Competition 2816 you were invited to submit a short story with an ingenious twist at the end. I was inspired to set this challenge after coming across O. Henry’s ‘The Gift of the Magi’ and then rereading Maupassant’s quietly devastating ‘The Necklace’. The moral of Bill Greenwell’s tale — dishonesty pays — struck me

In Competition 2814 you were invited to describe how a great writer stumbled upon an idea that he or she later put to good use. Thanks to Messrs Allgar and Moore, Brians both, for suggesting that I challenge competitors to imagine the unlikely circumstances in which the seeds of great literary works were sown. I

In Competition 2813 you were invited to submit an application in verse, from the poet of your choice, for the position of poet laureate. There were robust bids from poets who were passed over for the laureateship on account of their questionable politics — Pope, for example, and Milton — as well as from those

In Competition No. 2812 you were invited to provide a poem celebrating bookshops. Space is tight, which leaves room only for a congratulatory slap on the back all-round but especially to unlucky losers Max Ross, who submitted a clever acrostic, Gerard Benson, James Leslie-Melville, Lydia Shaxberd, Alison Zucker and Annette Field. The prizewinners below earn