In Competition No. 3297, you were invited to provide a psychiatrist’s report on a well-known literary character. The germ of this challenge was an interview with Olivia Colman, who played Miss Havisham in a recent adaptation of Great Expectations, in which the actress said of her character: ‘It’s terrible what happens to Miss Havisham… If
In Competition No. 3296, you were invited to provide a poem whose rhyme words are all at least three syllables. You riffed off W.S. Gilbert, Wordsworth and Dylan Thomas,among others, in limericks, double dactyls and villanelles, about subjects ranging from Gary Lineker to sex dolls. Philip Roe, Barbara Jones and Chris Ramsey shone, but the winners
In Competition No. 3295, you were invited to submit a comically appalling final paragraph to the worst of all possible novels. From time to time, I set a challenge that owes a debt to the Victorian novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton – who enjoyed a brief burst of popularity in his day, before falling out of favour
In Competition No. 3294, you were invited to provide the first 16 lines of an ode to a turnip or another similarly unglamorous vegetable. This assignment was prompted, of course, by Thérèse Coffey’s suggestion that we respond to shortages in salad vegetables by embracing the turnip. But I also had in mind the wonderful odes
In Competition No. 3293, you were invited to provide an extract from the autobiography of a well-known public figure which manages to make a very interesting life sound extraordinarily dull. I am grateful to Sarah Drury for suggesting this terrific challenge. Honourable mentions, in a modest-sized entry, go to Sir Alec Guinness’s Spam anecdote (Jonathan
In Competition No. 3292, you were invited to provide a poem to mark the death of Betty Boothroyd. The formidable Lady Boothroyd – the Guardian obituarist’s description of her exuding ‘warmth and wit’ and ‘a whiff of glamour’ was spot-on – brought out the best in you. There were neat acrostics from David Silverman and
In Competition No. 3291, you were invited to provide a profile of a well-known person in which their qualities are compared to items of food or drink. A commendation to Chris O’Carroll for his gastronomical portrait of Jeremy Clarkson – ‘…the scorching sarcasm he deploys in lieu of wit manages to combine the sadistic fire
In Competition No. 3290, you were invited to recast the Lord’s Prayer as a sonnet. The late Frank Kermode reckoned that any schoolboy can write a sonnet, but this challenge was a deceptively simple one; as Nick MacKinnon observed: ‘the Lord’s Prayer is very efficient’. Nonetheless, it drew a large and witty haul, in which
In Competition No. 3289, you were invited to provide an extract from a politically correct version of a work by an unreconstructed male novelist or poet. An honourable mention to Alex Steelsmith for his reimagining of ‘Song of Myself’ by Walt Whitman, celebrated poet but also author of the long-forgotten Manly Health and Training in
In Competition No. 3288, you were invited to supply a sonnet on an embarrassing ailment. To make space for as many winners as possible, I’ll keep it brief: in an amusing and accomplished entry, the sonnets below nosed ahead of the pack and earn their authors £15. They flee from me that sometime did me
In Competition No. 3287, you were invited to supply a review of a film, novel, poem or play in the style of a writer for whom the theme might be deemed an appropriate choice. Thanks to Philip Stevens for suggesting this terrific challenge, which attracted a sizeable and stellar entry. Honourable mentions to Moray McGowan’s
In Competition No. 3286, you were invited to submit a toe-curling Valentine poem to Harry, or to the love object of your choice. Meghan and her frightful poems were the inspiration for this assignment but perhaps we should cut her some slack; as Carol Ann Duffy has said, love poetry is the hardest to write.
In Competition No. 3285, you were invited to supply an extract from the libretto of a musical based on the life story of a politician. Berlusconi: A New Musical, which comes to Southwark Playhouse next month, is described enticingly on the theatre’s website as ‘a hilarious, naughty, noisy exposé of the original perma-tanned media mogul
In Competition No. 3284, you were invited to supply a topical short story that begins with the last line of a well-known novel and ends with the first. Much has been written about the rise of AI bot ChatGPT (from zero users to several million its first two weeks!), and reader Alistair Kelman fed it
In Competition No. 3283, you were invited to submit ‘A Peer’s Lament’. There was a smattering of references to Baroness Mone, whose travails prompted this challenge. But of course members of the Upper House have plenty to worry about besides, as winningly detailed in a lively and varied entry that contained echoes ranging from Poe,
In Competition No. 3282, you were invited to submit a short story narrated from an un-usual perspective. The seed for this challenge was Kim Stanley-Robinson’s cli-fi novel Ministry For the Future, described by the New Yorker as ‘both harrowing and heartening’. One of its chapters is narrated by a carbon atom, another by the market;
In Competition No. 3281, you were invited to provide 16 lines of cheerful welcome to 2023 in the metre of Tennyson’s ‘In Memoriam’. ‘Ring out the old, ring in the new,’ wrote the poet in ‘Ring out, wild bells’, part of ‘In Memoriam’. Hats off to all: it was a terrific entry – cheery but
In Competition No. 3280, you were invited to submit an updating of W.H. Auden’s ‘Night Mail’ entitled ‘Email’. ‘Night Mail’ was written to accompany a section of the excellent 1936 documentary about the London to Glasgow Postal Special directed by Basil Wright and Harry Watt (who described Auden as looking like a ‘half-witted Swedish deckhand’).
In Competition No. 3279, you were invited to submit an extract from a contemporary reimagining of Charles Dickens’s A ChristmasCarol. In 2018, the former children’s laureate Michael Rosen updated the novella – my ‘Ghostly little book’ as Dickens called it – for a 21st-century age of austerity; fast forward a few years and its themes
In Competition No. 3278, you were invited to supply a well-known writer’s response to the question what makes the perfect citizen? In 1970, as part of a school project, a ten-year-old wrote to Charles M. Schulz to ask him a similar question. But the boy asked what makes a ‘good’ rather than ‘perfect’ citizen, and
