Competition

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:   Cheesius Maximus: Augustus Caesar Empowered the People and Senate of Rome. Annexed Hispania; Raided North Africa; Authoritarian — Unless at home… Ian Barker earns an honourable mention, the winners below take £20. Joyless autumn day: Falling like cherry blossom, Killed from grassy knoll David Silverman   Wily old warhorse, you made your name great In leading your country to fight against Fate.

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 little maids in politics, we,/ Boris-resistant as can be…’), Iolanthe (Lord Chancellor’s ‘Nightmare Song’) and H.M.S. Pinafore (‘Ring the merry bells for Brexit!’), among others. There were stellar performances from Max Gutmann, Sylvia Fairley, David Shields and D.A. Prince. They were only narrowly outstripped by the winners below, who earn £30 each.

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 to go by:   Oh, thou demon Drink, thou fell destroyer; Thou curse of society, and its greatest annoyer. What hast thou done to society, let me think? I answer thou hast caused the most of ills, thou demon Drink. Some of you clearly reckon, though, that beneath the teetotal, God-fearing façade lay something altogether wilder. Over to the winners, who pocket £35 each.

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 Catholic mass — could constitute a hate crime. Mr Evans weaved this into his amusing take on Kipling’s ‘If’. Equally enjoyable were reworkings by D.A. Prince, David Silver-man and John O’Byrne of Henry Reed’s ‘Naming of Parts’ (‘Today we have shaking of parts…’) and Walt Whitman’s ‘Song of My Self--Humiliation’, courtesy of Mark McDonnell. There was so much to admire.

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 winners earn £25 each. As B. came buzzing over the common, he noticed that he was alone. Where were his erstwhile friends? he wondered idly. They seemed to have packed up their hives and vanished, although some, he realised, had switched sub-genus, and were describing themselves as rumblebees, jumblebees, even zomblebees. Very discombobulating. Were they really of a different stripe?

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 you followed his lead. Sergey Trukhtanov and Joe Houlihan submitted fine homages to Conan-Doyle. David Shields, Martin Elster, Jenny Hill and Tim Raikes also stood out. And props to clever John O’Byrne, who made his entry using first lines of Shakespeare sonnets (changing the final word to fit the brief). The winners, printed below, are rewarded with £20 each. Milton!

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 on the country folk). Neither worked on its own, so Eliot stitched them together and, hey presto! I realised, reading your entries, that the brief had been ambiguous: while some of you lifted the exact text, others went for a looser approach. Both were permissible and both produced some terrific entries. Honourable mentions to Lauren Peon and ­Adrian Fry. The winners take £30 each.

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. The six below take £25 each.   The deadly battle is renewed each morning; The enemy, entrenched within the field, Defeated for a while at each day’s dawning, Regroups by night, yet I shall never yield.   I arm myself with blades that need no honing To face the war that must be fought each day, Steeling myself against the anguished groaning And cries of pain that permeate the fray.

In Competition No. 3105 you were ­invited to submit a fragment of commentary on the Women’s World Cup delivered by a figure from the world of fact or fiction, dead or alive.  From Joseph Houlihan’s William Mc­Gonagall, who chronicles the ­Scottish team’s defeat at the boots of the Auld Enemy, to R.M. Goddard’s Samuel Beckett — ‘Miss Reilly, a fugue of female feet at frolic, dribbles delicately past the centre forward and passes to the sweeper, then pauses to spit decorously on the greensward…’ — it was a cracking entry.  J. Seery and W.J. Webster earn honourable mentions, those printed below take £25 apiece, and woman of the match, D.A. Prince, pockets the bonus fiver.

In Competition No. 3104 you were invited to encapsulate the life story of a well-known person, living or dead, in three limericks.   The limerick form was neatly summed up by the late Paul Griffin, long-time competitor and a regular winner on these pages:   A limerick’s short and it’s slick; Like a racehorse it has to be quick: The front may seem calm And cause no alarm But the end is the bit that can kick.   The saints and sinners whose lives you squished into 15 lines ranged from Donald Trump, Jim Davidson and Mad King Ludwig to Jesus and Helen Keller. Honourable mentions go to C. Paul Evans, Martin Elster, David Silverman and W.J. Webster; the winners, below, are rewarded with £25 apiece.

In Competition No. 3103 you were invited to submit a Shakespearean soliloquy delivered by one of the contenders for the Tory leadership in which they consider their pitch for the top job. Though many chose to plug the gap created by Boris Johnson’s public reticence, there was a sprinkling of his fellow hopefuls. Most are now out of the running, but they get one final hearing below.   A round of raucous applause for the winners, who take £20 each. And commiserations to the unlucky losers. Away with hustings, pish to protocol! I am the one convincing candidate To lead our nation through these troublous times. My rivals — ill-starr’d, ineffectual oafs, Crass corner-boys, dim double-breasted spivs, Main-chance manipulators, cheap qui-vivers.

In Competition No. 3102 you were invited to submit a fan letter from one well-known person from the field of fact or fiction to another.   Frank McDonald’s Lady Macbeth fist-bumps Nicola Sturgeon: ‘My dearest Nicola there is no need/ For me to pour my spirits in thine ear;/ Already you excel me in your lust/ To seize the Scottish crown…’.

In Competition No. 3101 you were invited to compose a contemporary take on ‘The New Colossus’, the 1883 sonnet by Emma Lazarus that is inscribed on a bronze plaque on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.   Written as part of an effort to raise money for the construction of the 89ft pedestal, the poem has spoken powerfully to successive generations. Today it is often invoked as a counterpoint to Donald Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric, in particular the famous lines:   Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free   Most of you ran with this idea and produced accomplished if sometimes predictable entries. The best are printed below and earn their authors £20 each. Commendations go to Ann Drysdale, Frank McDonald, R.M.

In Competition 3100 you were invited to pen an ode to Alexa or Siri. A recent Unesco study claimed that submissive female-voiced virtual assistants perpetuate negative, out-dated gender stereotypes, and this assignment did seem to bring out the unreconstructed roguish side in some. You know who you are. The winners below earn £25 each.   Alexa, you’re the sunshine of my life. You answer wisely like an honest wife. ‘You Are the Sunshine of My Life’, a song by Stevie Wonder, is three minutes long.   Alexa, are you like a summer’s day? That’s what a poet might be moved to say. Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare, who Wrote poems and is a well-known playwright, too.   Alexa, are you like a red, red rose, A creature more of poetry than prose?

In Competition No. 3099 you were invited to dream up an imaginary animal that is a hybrid of two existing ones and write a poem about it.   The discovery, some time ago, that the Romans called a giraffe a ‘cameleopard’ (also the subject of a poem by Thomas Hood) gave me the initial idea for this challenge. I was then reminded of it when reading Spike Milligan’s Book of Milliganimals with my son (remember the Moo-Zebras and the Bald Twit Lion?).   Your fantastic beasts included the Octophant, the kangasheep, the corgiraffe and a couple of llamadillos. It was a difficult comp to judge: there were loads of entries of great merit — many from old hands but plenty from newcomers too.

In Competition No. 3098 you were invited to submit a poem that can be read forwards and backwards, i.e. from the top down and the bottom up.   I worried, as the entries trickled in, that I had set the bar too high, especially given the anguished comments that accompanied some of them. ‘This was one of your really tough assignments,’ wrote one old hand, ‘a combination of mathematics and poetics.’ ‘This challenge almost made me cry,’ wailed another.   But I needn’t have worried. Your submissions — some palindromic — combined technical adroitness with clever content. High fives to the winners below who are rewarded with £20 each. This is a verse you can flip, you can flop. The top is the bottom, the bottom the top.

In Competition No. 3097 you were invited to submit a poem about Englishness in the style of a well-known poet.   The line-up was mostly predictable — from Chesterton, so-called ‘prophet of Brexit’, through Larkin, Betjeman, Brooke, Housman and, of course, Kipling. But it was an American, Ogden Nash, whose pen portrait of us prompted me to set this challenge:   Let us pause to consider the English Who when they pause to consider themselves they get all reticently thrilled and tinglish, Because every Englishman is convinced of one thing, viz: That to be an Englishman is to belong to the most exclusive club there is…   The winners, in a field where the mood ranged from elegiac to caustic, earn £25.

In Competition No. 3096 you were invited to submit a short story that ends ‘I feel like a half-eaten gorgonzola.’   Thanks to reader Mark O’Connor, who suggested that this observation which, in case you were wondering, comes from a letter written by Lytton Strachey to his elder brother James on 27 July 1908, might be incorporated into a challenge.   It turned out to be a tricky one: despite valiant — and often ingenious — attempts to incorporate the given phrase without the edges showing, there was an inevitable element of stiltedness and contrivance. Medusa and Emile Zola enjoyed starring roles in many entries — some more successful than others.

In Competition No. 3095 you were invited to submit an elegy by a poet on another poet.   The prompt for this challenge was ‘Adonais’, Shelley’s celebrated 55-stanza tribute to Keats. Frank McDonald imagined Keats responding in kind:   My heart aches for you, brother Percy Bysshe, Who wept for me although my name was writ In water. Dearest friend, it was my wish We two romantics might some autumn sit…   Robert Schechter, meanwhile, channelled Auden, who also wrote a famous elegy to a fellow poet. Here he is on Ogden Nash:   Earth, receive an honoured guest. Ogden Nash is laid to rest. Let the Yankee vessel sink Emptied of its light-heartedly whimsical yet somehow undeniably indelible ink.

In Competition No. 3094 you were invited to submit a ‘Sonnet Found in a Deserted Mad House’. G.K. Chesterton once observed that ‘poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese’. Well, not the anonymous author of the curious poem that inspired this challenge: line eight of ‘Sonnet Found in a Deserted Mad House’, which appeared in A Nonsense Anthology (1915), edited by Carolyn Wells, refers to ‘…mournful mouths filled full of mirth and cheese…’   Food featured strongly in your excellent and varied compositions (a boiled egg — two mentions — artichokes, yogurt, custard pies…). It was tricky to nominate winners, but after much prevarication I settled on the seven below, who take £20 each.