Literary competition

The latest challenge, prompted by the hashtag #RemoveALetterSpoilABook that’s been doing the rounds on Twitter, saw you at your best. Among many highlights in a whopping, inventive entry were Robert Schechter’s A Clockwork Orange, which featured Donald Trump’s manhood, and a turn by Ted Hughes in Katie Mallett’s Far from the Madding Crow. Other star performers were Mike Morrison, John Samson, Peter Bear, Toni Hinckley, Frank Upton and J.M. Wilson. Sadly there was room for just the six winners printed below, who take £25 each. Hugh King nets £30. Hugh King/Bleak Ouse In the chilly dawn, Seth Fluck limped past the glowering hulk of Ely Cathedral, down to the stinking

Your latest challenge was to propose a new and ludicrous piece of legislation along with a justification for it. Although Basil Ransome-Davies makes it into the winning line-up, some might argue that his proposal is far from ludicrous, given that cats are taking over the internet. Another suggestion that struck me as eminently sensible was Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead’s call for a ban on the wearing of protuberant rucksacks in busy places. Chris O’Carroll’s neat meta entry, which demands a ban on ‘journals of news and opinion …sponsoring competitions that award prizes for light verse and frivolous comic prose’, made me smile, and I also commend D.A. Prince, who was not alone

The latest challenge, to submit a poem about sharing a drink with a famous writer, was inspired by the poetry collection that made Wendy Cope’s name. I suspected this might be a popular one and so it proved. I was spoilt for choice winner-wise, so heartfelt commiserations to the many who came within a whisker of making the final cut, especially Alan Millard, Martin Parker, Roger Theobald, Chris O’Carroll and Siriol Troup. The entries that survived the painful and protracted cull are printed below and earn their authors £25 each. Bill Greenwell pockets £30. Bill Greenwell I’m sitting sipping cider with Bill Bryson, And listening to his monologues take wing:

The latest competition was inspired by the endeavours of Charles Foster, who, in his fascinating, funny book Being a Beast, recounts his attempts ‘to learn what it is like to shuffle or swoop through a landscape that is mainly olfactory and auditory rather than visual’. As a badger he took up residence in a hole and ate earthworms (they taste of ‘slime and the land’). And as an urban fox he ‘lay in a backyard in Bow, foodless and drinkless, urinating and defecating where I was, waiting for the night and treating as hostile the humans living in terraced houses all round — which wasn’t hard’. It’s a mighty tall

Your latest challenge was to submit a poem in praise of old age. Old age gets a bad rap. Only the other week in The Spectator Stewart Dakers questioned our obsession with chasing longevity given the decrepitude and indignities of that final furlong. Here was your chance to put the case for the defence. The competition certainly struck a chord, if the size of the postbag — from veterans and newbies alike — is anything to go by. It was a lively and cheering entry, infused with the spirit of the purple-wearing heroine of Jenny Joseph’s poem ‘Warning’ (‘When I am an old woman I shall wear purple…’), and a

The latest competition called for a verse obituary of a well-known person who has died in the past year. There’s certainly no shortage of candidates. Whether more famous people than usual are dying or whether it just seems that way I don’t know, but hardly a day goes by without one of the stars of light entertainment who provided the cultural backdrop to my formative years — Ronnie Corbett, Victoria Wood, Paul Daniels, Anne Kirkbride, Terry Wogan, Cilla Black, Keith Harris — checking into the horizontal Hilton. Alanna Blake and Max Ross were clever and touching on Ronnie Corbett; Chris O’Carroll, Martin Parker, D.A. Prince and Brian Murdoch also deserve

The invitation to suggest remarks guaranteed to get rid of a guest who is outstaying his or her welcome drew in the punters. Leading the pack as surefire ways to get lingering visitors reaching for their coats were birth videos, Estonian whisky, Stockhausen, didgeridoo recitals and Rolf Harris’s greatest hits. Also popular were suggestions along the lines of Basil Ransome-Davies’s ‘While you’re here, how about a spot of anal sex?’ and Tracy Davidson ‘Fancy a threesome?’, both of which struck me as somewhat risky. If all else fails, there’s always Graham Pirnie’s admirably uncompromising ‘Fuck off you boring old cow/git.’ Those printed below are rewarded with £5 apiece. Nicholas Hodgson

The latest challenge was to supply Dr Seuss’s take on the US presidential race. Given his taste for taking down bullies, tyrants and hypocrites, it seems unlikely that Theodor Geisel would have been a fan of the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, who, as might be expected, loomed large in your submissions. It was a tall order to ape Seuss’s imaginative, subversive genius but you produced a cracking entry. Commendations to Mae Scanlan, Frank Upton, Brian Allgar and Alan Millard. Those printed below take £25; Chris O’Carroll pockets £30. Chris O’Carroll McTrumpeter trumpets, ‘I’m born to be Prez! I say the things no other candidate sez! I’m richer than God!

The invitation to submit extracts from the diaries of the famous that their writers did not wish the world to see was taken up with gusto. Josh Ekroy impressed, lifting the lid on F.R.Leavis’ and C.P. Snow’s chummy trysts; Alan Millard wasn’t alone in outing God-botherer Richard Dawkins; and here’s a snippet from Sylvia Fairley’s entry, which blows the whistle on Wordsworth: Walked around Ullswater in pensive mood, unable to find a suitable rhyme for ‘hills’. My dear sister, as ever, solved my predicament … the muse inspired her, and she has completed the poem already. Hats off, all round, but especially to the winners, printed below, who are rewarded

Following Tom Shakespeare’s recent suggestion that now might be a good time to ditch ‘God Save the Queen’ — ‘terrible tune, with banal lyrics’ — and replace it with something that more accurately reflects contemporary Britain, competitors were invited to propose lyrics for a new British national anthem. In an entry whose tone varied wildly, my favourite was Bill Greenwell’s jaunty reimagining of ‘Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick’ by the late, great Ian Dury, which is refreshingly lacking in jaundice, sentimentality or jingoism. It brought to mind ‘This Land is Your Land’ (‘From California to the New York Island/ From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters’),

Your latest challenge was to compose a Valentine’s triolet. A famous example of the triolet is Frances Cornford’s catty ‘To a Fat Lady seen from the Train’ (‘O fat white woman whom nobody loves/ Why do you walk through the field in gloves’), but it was that ace trioleteer Wendy Cope’s rather more charming ‘Valentine’ that prompted me to invite you to take on this medieval form. It was a varied, funny and accomplished entry: you rose admirably to the challenge of breathing life into your triolets, despite the formal straitjacket. The winners below take £15 each. Rosemary Kirk You weren’t the one I would have picked if it had

For the latest competition you were invited to submit a poem suitable for inclusion in Now We are Rich. There was no obligation to write in the style of A.A. Milne, but most of you did. I enjoyed Barbara Kirby’s neat take on Milne’s ‘A Thought’ : If I were Ted and Ted were me, Then he’d sit here and I’d serve tea. If Ted were me and I were Ted, I’d dump it on the bleeder’s head. There were stellar performances, too, from D.A. Prince, Warren Clements, Max Gutmann, Martin Parker and George Simmers, who were unlucky to go unrewarded. The winners printed below take £30 apiece. Bill Greenwell

Reader Tom Dulake suggested that I invite competitors to submit a blurb for a misery memoir, which struck me as a good idea. Who knows what drives the reading public’s appetite for other people’s suffering, but they seem to lap it up. The ‘Painful Lives’ sections of bookshops heave with mis lit, harrowing accounts of torment and degradation, though publishers prefer to describe the genre as inspirational lit, or inspi-lit for short (the idea being that it shows how the human spirit can transcend even the most horrifying abuse). The entries printed below feature a bit of triumph but mostly torture, and unsure whether to congratulate or commiserate with their

The latest brief, to submit up to 16 lines of verse that are the fruit of a collaboration between two poets (living or dead) was open to interpretation — which clearly drove Andrew Duncan-Jones potty: They fuck you up, these blasted comps Whose rubrics make you scratch your head. So do they want poetic romps Penned by one living and one dead? Or should they be equivalent — Both buggers dead, or both alive? The spec. is so ambivalent, How can we struggling compers thrive? Still, ambiguity produced a varied entry. Some of you submitted centos (poems comprised of lines from existing poems); others imagined a pair of poets co-writing

The latest competition was a technical challenge with a bit of soothsaying thrown in. You were asked for an acrostic poem containing some predictions for the next decade, in which the first letters of the lines read NOSTRADAMUS. Although the forecast was bleak — no surprise there — a welcome smattering of more leftfield prophecies made me sit up and take notice: Richard Dawkins finds God; A and Z amicably switch places; Durham’s new bishop wins Miss UK; the Chilcot report is met with universal approval. Commiserations to near-winners Sam Gwynn, G.M. Southgate, Brian Allgar, Katie Mallett and Alan Millard. Those that just beat them to it are printed below