Lucy Vickery

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.