In Competition No. 3176 you were invited to write a poem to a city. This challenge was inspired by both Simon Armitage’s letter to London (‘Dear London, I’ve applied for a restraining order requiring that you remain 200 miles from Huddersfield at all times…’), and William McGonagall’s inadvertently hilarious ‘Jottings of New York’, of which
In Competition No. 3175 you were invited to submit a prequel to a well-known poem. C. Paul Evans’s opening to a prequel to the nation’s favourite poem caught my eye: My publishers had telephoned to askFor something inspirational and spiffy:I told them I would think about the task,But mentioned I was feeling somewhat iffy… As
In Competition No. 3174 you were invited to write a poem in which each line begins with the letters A S D F G H J K L Z X C V B N M, in that order. One entry began: ‘Asinine/ Stupid/ Dumb/ Fatuous…’, and continued in a similar vein; a comment, perhaps, on
In Competition No. 3173 you were invited to give a fresh twist to a well-known single line of poetry by adding a line of your own to it. This was a wildly popular competition, and my inbox was flooded with entries. Many of you were thinking along the same lines, which produced a fair amount
In Competition No. 3172 you were invited to submit a poem about the government’s coronavirus messaging. Many of you, nudged no doubt by the title of the challenge, went for Milne pastiche. Take a bow, Martin Brinkworth: ‘When R was 1/ It had just begun…’; Brian Murdoch: ‘Boris Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, when he became
In Competition No. 3171, a challenge suggested by a kind reader, you were invited to submit a requiem in verse for the pangolin. One competitor pointed out that my request for a requiem seemed somewhat premature given that pangolins are still very much with us. Well, for the moment they are. But these shy, solitary,
In Competition No. 3170, a challenge inspired by Shelley’s assertion that ‘poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world’, you were invited to step into the shoes of a well-known poet and write their own law in verse. The above quotation is from Shelley’s 1821 essay A Defence of Poetry, written in response to his
In Competition No. 3169 you were invited to submit a poem about autumn in which the last letter of each line becomes the first of the following line. Many of you wrote in praise of what the novelist Charlotte Mendelson has described as ‘the loveliness of rotting nature’; a time when nature feels at its
In Competition No. 3168 you were invited to compose a response on the part of a well-known writer to an inappropriate suggestion about the future direction of their work. This Austen-inspired challenge produced a terrific entry, so high fives to you all. Dorothy Pope’s Philip Larkin, giving short shrift to the suggestion that he venture
In Competition No. 3167 you were invited to submit a rhymed poem that is leadenly prosaic in tone and content. When it comes to the joys of bad poetry, McGonagall tends to steal the show. But I also have a soft spot for Amanda McKittrick Ros, whose novels — and verse — provide passages of
In Competition No. 3166 you were invited to supply a poem either celebrating or lamenting the cancellation of Philadelphia’s annual naked cycle ride. This enormously popular event, whose aim is to promote body positivity and eco-awareness, sees throngs of cyclists, in varying degrees of undress (total nudity optional), complete a ten-mile course around the streets
In Competition No. 3165 you were invited to supply a job reference for a well-known public figure, past or present, that while seemingly positive reveals the failings of the candidate in question. Robert Schechter discerns a streak of modesty in Donald Trump: ‘His reluctance to boast about his great wealth has driven him to take
In Competition No. 3164 you were invited to submit a poem in which each line comes from a different well-known poem. The cento form — the stitching together of lines from existing poems — is an ancient one, around since at least the days of Virgil and Homer. ‘Cento Nuptialis’, by the Roman poet and
In Competition No. 3163 you were invited to submit well-known poems encapsulated in four lines. Now that the internet has all but destroyed our attention spans, who has the mental wherewithal to plough through Paradise Lost or The Faerie Queene? Well, thanks to the cracking four-liners below, you don’t have to. Props to David Harris,
In Competition No. 3162 you were invited to submit double dactyls on stars of popular or classical music. Fans of ‘higgledy-piggledies’, as they are also known, should check out Jiggery Pokery, the terrific 1967 compendium of the form, edited by Anthony Hecht and John Hollander, who, in case anyone is wondering exactly what a double
In Competition No. 3161 you were invited to supply a sonnet with certain rhyme words to be used in a given order. Bout-rimés contests were a favourite parlour game of Dante Rossetti and his brother William, but the given end rhymes for this assignment come from a sonnet written in the winter of 1816 by
In Competition No. 3160 you were invited to supply a short story whose opening sentence is ‘I have no idea whether I killed him.’ The idea for this challenge came from The Mandibles: A Family 2029-2047, Lionel Shriver’s gripping and plausible 2016 novel about societal meltdown in the US following the collapse of its economy
In Competition No. 3159 you were invited to supply a poem that does not contain the letter ‘e’. This fiendish challenge was a nod to Georges Perec’s ‘e’-less tour de force La Disparition (protagonist: A. Vowl), which was subsequently translated, also without the letter ‘e’, by the heroic Gilbert Adair. Perec, who once composed a
In Competition No. 3158 you were invited to supply an extract describing a well-known fictional detective who finds themselves catapulted into an unfamiliar milieu. This was a crowd-pleasing comp, attracting a large field of old hands and newcomers alike. But it turned out to be a tricky one too and terrific beginnings were often marred
In Competition No. 3157 you were invited to describe a visit to Glastonbury or Glyndebourne in the style of an author of your choice. Highlights in an especially hotly contested week — oh, for more space! — were Timothy Clegg’s John Masefield, R.M. Goddard’s John Cooper Clarke, John Mounsey’s Evelyn Waugh, Hugh King’s Edward Gibbon,
