In Competition 2832 you were invited to compose what might be a quintessential opening paragraph from the pen of either Graham Greene, Frank Kafka, Jane Austen or Tolkien. It was a tall order to channel such literary genius, but on the whole you did it pretty well. Greene, with his immediately distinctive voice, was by
Spectator literary competition No. 2833 This week’s task is a fashionably confessional one. We live in an age of emotional incontinence, where spilling the beans to as many people as possible seems to be all the rage, so let’s have an extract from the teenage diary of a well-known public figure, living or dead. Please
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,
Spectator literary competition No. 2832 This week’s assignment is a nod to Robert Burns and his magnificent ‘Address to the Haggis’, which begins: Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o’ the pudding-race! Aboon them a’ yet tak your place, Painch, tripe, or thairm: Weel are ye wordy o’a grace As lang’s my arm.
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
Spectator literary competition No. 2830 This week you are invited to choose, from different authors, two characters who have the same job or position (e.g., Shakespeare’s Quince and Lewis Carroll’s Carpenter, Mr Collins and Mr Slope, Holmes and Philip Marlowe) and give an excerpt of not more than 150 words from their conversation on meeting.
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
If, like me, you are allergic to pantomime (‘Oh, no you’re not!’; ‘Oh, yes I am!’) then help is at hand: the Gruffalo is in town and strutting his stuff, to the delight of legions of tiny fans, at the Lyric, Shaftesbury Avenue until 12 January. Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s much-loved verse fable tells
Spectator literary competition No. 2829 Peter Porter called Hull ‘the most poetic city in England’ but would Philip Larkin have agreed? What would he have made of his adopted home city being named 2017’s City of Culture? Answers, please, in verse of up to 16 lines, to be emailed to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 1
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
Spectator literary competition No. 2828 As the New Year hurtles towards us, it’s time for a retrospective commentary, in verse, on 2013. Please email entries of up to 16 lines to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 9 December (the shorter deadline is because of our seasonal production schedule). The recent competition to supply a poem for
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
Spectator literary competition No. 2827 It’s time for a seasonal challenge: let’s have a Christmas list, in verse, written in the style of the poet of your choice. Entries of up to 16 lines should be emailed to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 2 December. The recent assignment in which competitors were asked to supply double
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,
Our competition this week invites you to submit nonsense verse on a wintry theme. The line between sense and nonsense is a blurred one. In his Spectator review of Geoffrey Grigson’s Faber anthology of nonsense verse, Anthony Burgess encapsulated this nicely, noting that Mr Grigson ‘wisely evades, in his preface, anything like a definition of nonsense. He
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
Spectator literary competition No. 2824 You are invited to submit a double clerihew about a well-known sporting figure, past or present. The rules governing a clerihew are well set out in its Wikipedia entry but here are some additional pointers from the poet James Michie, a master of the form, who regularly contributed clerihews to The
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