Competition

In Competition No. 3133 you were invited to provide a passage about food written in the style of a well-known author. Douglas G. Brown’s ‘Observation on a Vegetable That Was Probably Unknown to Ogden Nash’ struck a chord: ‘Kale consumed raw/ Gets stuck in one’s craw;/ But kale, marinated,/ Is still overrated’. Nick Syrett and Martyn Hurst also stood out, as did Nick MacKinnon’s Shelley on molecular gastronomy — ‘My name is Heston Blumenthal, chef of chefs./ Look on my pud, ye hungry, and despair!’ — and Katie Mallett’s updating of Betjeman’s ‘Vers de Sociéte’. They were only narrowly outflanked by the winners, printed below, who each snaffle £25. ‘A peach just beautifully is!

In Competition No. 3130 you were invited to add to Sam Leith’s lines about Boris Johnson, written in the metre of Longfellow’s ‘The Song of Hiawatha’: ‘Mayor of London Boris Johnson/ Much admired the lady’s pole-dance/ Mentored well her start-up business…’ Though Longfellow has long fallen out of fashion, in his day he was a poet celebrity, imitated by Baudelaire, parodied by Lewis Carroll and outselling Browning and Tennyson (he was also the first American to be honoured with a marble bust in Poet’s Corner at Westminster Abbey). The poet J.D.

In Competition No. 3129 you were invited to submit a poem entitled ‘’Twas the Night Before Brexit’. That seasonal classic ‘A Visit From St Nicholas’, more usually known as ‘The Night Before Christmas’, was published anonymously in 1823 and written by Clement Clarke Moore — or at least he claimed it was. The family of the gentleman-poet Henry Livingston Jr later contended that he was the author, and the controversy rumbles on. Space is short so I will use what remains to thank you all, veterans and newcomers alike, for your terrifically witty and well-made entries over the past 12 months. I look forward to many more in the year ahead.   This week’s prizewinners, printed below, earn £30 apiece. Merry Christmas!

In Competition No. 3128 you were invited to submit letters to Santa written in the style of the author of your choice.   I failed to track down examples of real letters from well-known writers to Old Nick (although both Mark Twain and Tolkien penned letters to their children from Father Christmas). But this was more than compensated for by the terrific standard of entries: step forward, David Silverman, channelling Dan Brown: ‘Dear Santa, I know who you are, buddy! And I can prove it! You’re an anagram of SATAN!

In Competition No. 3127 you were invited to submit Shakespeare’s newly discovered ‘Woeful ballad to his mistress’ eyebrows’, as referred to by Jaques in As You Like It (‘And then the lover,/ Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad/ Made to his mistress’ eyebrow…’). For the purposes of this challenge, a ballad could be any sort of poem (most of you wrote sonnets) and anachronisms were allowed. The prizewinners, in another fiercely contested week, take £20.   What blessing crowns thy outward loveliness? A coiffed, enrapturing head of sable hair That blazes rank above the common press. Yet there is hair invisible elsewhere.

In Competition No. 3126 you were invited to rearrange the letters of the names of poets (e.g. Basho: ‘has B.O.’) and submit a poem of that title in the style of the poet concerned.   The inspiration for this challenge was the puzzle writer and editor Francis Heaney’s wonderful Holy Tango of Literature, which includes such delights as William Shakespeare’s ‘Is a sperm like a whale?’, Dorothy Parker’s ‘Dreary Hot Pork’ and William Carlos Williams’s ‘I will alarm Islamic owls’.

In Competition No. 3125 you were invited to compose a comically appalling first or final paragraph of the memoir of a well-known figure, living or dead.   This was one of those challenges that raises a glass in memory of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Victorian novelist and patron saint of purple prose. The oft-cited example of his florid style is the opening to the 1830 novel Paul Clifford — ‘It was a dark and stormy night’ — which was used by Charles Schulz as the first line of Snoopy’s novel, and by Brian Murdoch in his winning entry below.   You didn’t quite hit the spot this week and the standard was patchy. Some creditable entries were disqualified because they didn’t strike me as plausible beginnings or endings.

In Competition No. 3124 you were invited to compose clerihews about any date in the calendar. I was very grateful recently to eagle-eyed John O’Byrne, who drew my attention to the fact that the closing date for Competition No. 3125 was not 20 November, as printed in the magazine, but 13 November. Even better, he did it in clerihew form:   The 20 November, Now that I remember, Is the closing date not for 3125 but 3126 — So herewith my quick fix!   Clerihews always go down well and this challenge netted a whopping entry.

In Competition No. 3123 you were invited to submit a poem that begins ‘By Waterloo Station I sat down and …’.   Some of you begged, some swore, others slept. But most, in a pleasingly sizable entry, took their lead from weeping Elizabeth Smart. There was a welcome influx of newcomers this week, alongside the familiar names, and the tone ranged from the comic to the poignant.   Honourable mentions go to Paul Freeman, Gloria Brown, Ian Barker, Tim Raikes and Alan Millard. The winners below pocket £30 each and include George Simmers’s natty twist on Matthew Arnold’s friend Arthur Hugh Clough’s ‘Dipsychus’ (‘How Pleasant It Is to Have Money…’).   By Waterloo Station I sat down and prayed that the 2.

In Competition No. 3122, to mark the demise of the 178-year-old travel company, you were invited to submit a poem about Thomas Cook. The firm may have hit the buffers, but many entries featured its eponymous founder’s original offering — railway travel and Temperance tours — which would be just the job in our clean-living, climate-change-challenged times.   In a large and excellent crop, the six below stood out and earn their authors £25.   James Cook explored, and met the end Lèse-majesté procures, But Thomas Cook began the trend For organising tours.   He was dynamic, fired with hope, And thus the business boomed, Though nonetheless its moral scope Was tragically foredoomed.

In Competition No. 3121 you were invited to submit a song entitled ‘50 Ways to Leave the White House’.   While the brief steered you in the direction of Paul Simon’s 1975 hit (the inspiration for whose distinctive chorus was a rhyming game played with his infant son), I didn’t specify that you had to use that as your template, and some competitors drew inspiration from other well-known songs.   Over to the winners, who win £30 each. The problem is all about having a legacy. You need to be sure they will remember you, you see. When it comes down to it I think you will agree, There must be 50 ways to leave the White House.

In Competition No. 3120 you were invited to submit a poem reflecting on the Apollo 11 moon landing written in the style of the poet of your choice.   Cath Nichols’s enjoyable entry looked back on the lot of the Apollo wives through Wendy Cope’s acerbic eye. Nick MacKinnon was also an accomplished Cope impersonator:   Bloody men are like bloody rockets, you wait nearly five billion years and as soon as one feels up your craters another Apollo appears…   Rufus Rutherford, channelling Basho, submitted a charming haiku. And Robert Schechter, as Ogden Nash, also kept it brief: To the marvellous event that happened fifty years ago I dedicate this ode. The first man on the moon, you say? That was pretty good, but what I had in mind was Abbey Road.

In Competition No. 3119 you were invited to submit a poem about yellowhammers. This sparrow-sized songbird has inspired poetry from John Clare’s lovely ‘The Yellowhammer’s Nest’ to Robert Burns’s unlovely ‘The Yellow, Yellow Yorlin’ (‘But I took her by the waist, an’ laid her down in haste/, For a’ her squakin’ an’ squalin…’) You took up this challenge with gusto and delivered a top-notch and wide-ranging entry. The winners earn £25 each.   A certain subtle, govian fellow, When asked what code name he preferred, Chose ‘hammer’ as a striking word Then made his point by adding ‘yellow’.

In Competition No. 3118, which was inspired by Joan Didion’s wonderful essay of that title, you were invited to submit a short story whose last line is ‘I can’t get that monster out of my mind’. Another notable American female essayist, Susan Sontag, has come in for a bit of stick in these pages over the past few weeks, and she popped up again, in Hugh King’s short story: ‘Susan Sontag, naked, terrifying, had come to him in the night, pinned him down with hawser-like arms, and demanded to know his views on post-structuralism.’ Other memorable ‘monsters’ included Beowulf, the Minotaur and Jacob Rees-Mogg. The winners earn £25 each.

In Competition No. 3117 you were invited to recast a famous political speech as a sonnet.   Lots of you went for Elizabeth I’s address to the troops at Tilbury, but James Aske got there first in 1588, with a verse reworking  that appeared in Elizabetha Triumphans, his celebration of the Armada victory.   Well done: you were on mischievous form this week and clearly gave careful thought to your choice of speech. The winners, who each pocket £20, are printed below. First up is Ann Drysdale’s version of Cromwell’s dissolution of the rump parliament. It’s time to close the curtain on this farce, Your petty squabblings and your rotten cores. You call yourselves a Parliament? My arse! You’re just a gathering of thieves and whores.

In Competition No. 3116 you were invited to submit an extract from a government memo whose language would meet with the approval of Jacob Rees-Mogg. The Leader of the House recently sent his departmental staff a list of rules regarding grammar and vocabulary. The words ‘ongoing’ and ‘hopefully’ are out; imperial measurements are in. All non-titled males are henceforth to be referred to as ‘esquire’. Although Mr Rees-Mogg takes a dim view of words such as ‘very’, ‘got’ and ‘lot’, mischief-makers at the Guardian have pointed out that, according to Hansard, the honourable member himself has used one or other of the proscribed words or phrases on more than 700 occasions.

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 the exacting Geoffrey Grigson as ‘earthier and sharper than Marianne Moore’s’. Though this challenge didn’t see you at your sharpest — some entries tended towards the heavy-handed — those that stood out earn their authors £25 apiece.   One day a man was strolling through a wood when he heard a bird singing. It was a beguiling little song so he stopped to listen more closely.

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 as honest and straight as the men who worked them…’; Bill Greenwell’s Harold Pinter: ‘I mean, if you want cosy, I can do you cosy. Cosy. Bijou with all the trimmings, no word of a lie…’; Frank McDonald’s Oscar Wilde: ‘Here is security wrapped in splendour, with all the intoxication of alcohol. There is nothing to declare about the architect but his genius.