Competition

In Competition No. 2913 you were invited to submit an extract from the school report of a well-known author, living or dead. Teachers often get it wrong, of course. Eight-year-old Charlotte Brontë was described by hers in less than glowing terms: she ‘writes indifferently’ and ‘knows nothing of grammar, geography, history or accomplishments’. In 1943 Beryl Bainbridge, aged nine, elicited the following tart assessment: ‘Though her written work is the product of an obviously lively imagination, it is a pity that her spelling derives from the same source.’ And according to P.G. Wodehouse’s 1899 report from Dulwich College, he had ‘the most distorted ideas about wit and humour’. In a strong field, D.C.H.

In Competition No. 2912 you were invited to submit a tribute in verse to a once-popular foodstuff that has fallen out of favour. Bill Greenwell’s entry (Spangles!) brought to mind childhood pleasures, as did Sid Field’s (Creamola) and Jayne Osborn’s (Angel Delight). But I still shudder at the memory of spam fritters, and Alan Millard’s attempt to make them sound appealing fell on stony ground: More fit to nibble than to gnaw But no less tasty, cooked or raw Both Brian Allgar and Dorothy Pope mourned the passing of Fuller’s Walnut Cake, and Richard McCarthy submitted a rousing tribute to mutton in the style of Swinburne. All three deserve a commendation as do David Silverman, Philip Machin, Alanna Blake, Sylvia Fairley and Barbara Smoker.

In Competition No. 2911 you were invited to submit a thriller in three text messages. This one seemed straightforward enough but it turned out to be a tough assignment that stretched veterans and newcomers alike. As in all forms of micro-fiction — the mini-masterpiece attributed to Hemingway, ‘For sale: baby shoes, never worn’, springs to mind — it’s all about the reader filling in the gaps. Many entrants went for the mistaken-identity trope, which became rather monotonous after a time. But while I applauded those who attempted a more original twist, most of these didn’t quite come off. The standard was somewhat disappointing, then, but there were some creditable exceptions, printed below. They earn their authors £15 each.

In Competition No. 2910 you were invited to submit a poem by a pet who is cheesed off with its owner. The contempt in Basil Ransome-Davies’s closing couplet, written from the perspective of a bolshie moggy, was echoed throughout the entry by a hacked-off parade of bullied, misunderstood and condescended-to pets: He wants affection, he can kiss a duck. It’s what my mother told me: bipeds suck. I especially liked Sylvia Fairley’s homicidal preying mantis and Bill Greenwell’s scheming goldfish. Equally impressive were Hugh King, John Priestland, George Tetley, John-Paul Marney and Dave East, who were unlucky to miss out on a place in the winning line-up. Those entries printed below earn their authors £25 apiece. This week’s top dog is Martin Parker.

In Competition No. 2909 you were invited to follow in the footsteps of Michael Gove, who has urged civil servants to take inspiration from George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh, Jane Austen and George Eliot, and submit a memo generated by either the Department of Education or the Ministry of Justice as it might have been written by a writer you would like to see Whitehall bureaucrats model their correspondence on. It’s a squeeze this week, so I’ll hand straight over to the worthy winners below who earn £25 each. Brian Murdoch takes £30.

In Competition No. 2908 you were invited to submit a comically appalling opening to an imaginary novel. Thanks are due to the inventor of the annual Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest from whom I have pinched the idea for this challenge (Edward Bulwer--Lytton is often described as ‘the worst writer in history’). It was a pleasure to wade through your florid, convoluted prose, over-elaborate metaphors and inconsequential tangents. Dishonourable mentions go to Bill Greenwell for an opening composed entirely of hashtags and to C.J. Gleed. The best of the worst earn their authors £25 each. The bonus fiver is Edward Gilbert’s. Inspector Falcon Foot was an experienced murder investigator. He had seen it all in his long and distinguished career. This case felt very familiar.

In Competition No. 2907 you were invited to imagine that poets, living or dead, had been recruited to compose verse discouraging antisocial behaviour on the underground. This challenge was prompted by the results of Transport for London’s real-life efforts to use poetry to prompt Tube users to mind their manners: the poems in question feature rhyme and scansion that would have made McGonagall blush. Over to the experts, then. Adrian Fry’s Emily Dickinson — ‘Because I would not mind the gap’ — was an impressive runner-up, as were Charles Clive-Ponsonby-Fane, Mike Morrison and Alanna Blake. The winners, printed below, pocket £15 each.

In Competition No. 2906 you were invited to write a poem about an encounter in an airport. Craig Raine’s poem ‘Gatwick’ caused a right old kerfuffle when it was published recently in the London Review of Books. The Twitter bullies came out in force to broadcast their disgust at an elderly poet sharing his lustful thoughts about young women. I liked Fiona Pitt-Kethley’s entry, which had a warning for lecherous poets in airports: ‘We’ll see whose arse is large next time he comes/ To my desk in the airport. I’ve got chums/ With latex gloves and penetrating ways,/ Prepared to hold and search for many days.’ Honourable mentions also go to Roger Rengold, Brian Allgar and Jayne Osborn.

In Competition No. 2905 you were invited to write a sonnet whose lines begin with the letters R,O,Y,G,B,I,V,V,I,B,G,Y,O,R, in that order. Thanks to Frank McDonald for suggesting this gem of a competition. I ummed and ahed over what was a vast and accomplished entry trying to whittle it down to a winning seven. It wasn’t easy. Those that missed the cut — Bill Greenwell, Brian Allgar, John Whitworth, Adrienne Parker, Pippa Crawford, Priscilla Bench-Capon, David Silverman and Tim Raikes — did so by the narrowest of margins. Congratulations, all round. The winners, printed below, are rewarded with £20 each. The bonus fiver goes to Alan Millard’s sonnet on the Labour leadership contenders.

In Competition No. 2904 you were invited to take as your first line ‘There’s a breathless hush on the centre court’ and continue for up to 15 lines in the style of Sir Henry Newbolt’s poem ‘Vitaï Lampada’. There is just space to congratulate the winners and to commiserate with unlucky losers John Whitworth, who submitted a charming tribute to Christine Truman, Robert Cross, Sid Field and R.M. Goddard. Those printed below are rewarded with £25 each. Bill Greenwell hoists the championship trophy and nabs the bonus fiver in the process.   There’s a breathless hush on the Centre Court: Seventeenth deuce after championship point — The crowd is tense, as the first serve is short. Is this the time? Is there one to anoint?

In Competition No. 2903 you were invited to provide an extract from an article in an interiors magazine featuring some paint-colour names of your own invention that rival the ludicrousness of the real-life likes of ‘potentially purple’, ‘salty tear’ and ‘likeable sand’. High points in a patchy entry were Adrian Fry’s ‘Dresden licht’, John O’Byrne’s ‘failed rouble’, Alan Millard’s ‘hectic cockerel’, Mike Morrison’s ‘Magaluf mea culpa’ and Bill Greenwell’s ‘tartar’s lips’. Chris O’Carroll nabs the bonus fiver. The rest take £25 apiece.

In Competition No. 2903 you were invited to supply a poem incorporating a dozen cricketing terms. English poets love cricket: Housman, Betjeman, Chesterton and Sassoon all wrote about the game. And then, of course, there is Harold Pinter, who encapsulated it so beautifully in two lines: I saw Len Hutton in his prime, Another time, another time.   I admired P.C. Parrish’s clever poem in the opaque modernist style of Edith Sitwell. Tim Raikes, Peter Goulding, Nick Hodgson and Rosemary Kirk also stood out in a large and impressive field. The winners earn £25 apiece. Brian Allgar takes £30. My wife reminds me of a game of cricket: A splendid sport, but hard to comprehend. I often feel I’m on a sticky wicket — Caught out, or stumped, or driven round the bend.

In Competition No. 2901 you were invited to write a poem in praise of a modern-day blot on the landscape. Stephen Spender wasn’t praising pylons on aesthetic grounds in his notorious poem but celebrating the progress that these non-human structures embody: ‘There runs the quick/perspective of the future’. The spirit of the 1930s poets — applied to those 21st-century gods technology and consumerism — was very much alive in what was a large and accomplished entry. It was tricky to single out just six prizewinners. Catherine Chandler, Tim Raikes, Bill Greenwell and Alanna Blake shone, but were narrowly pipped to the post by those printed below, who are rewarded with £25 each. Brian Murdoch pockets the bonus fiver.

In Competition No. 2900 you were invited to write a short story that ends on a condiment of your choice. The germ of this comp was the writer Richard Brautigan’s wish to end a short story with the word ‘mayonnaise’, an ambition he fulfilled in his 1967 novel Trout Fishing in America. Actually, strictly speaking, he didn’t. As an eagle-eyed friend and self-confessed pedant pointed out to me, the word that appears in most editions is the deliberately misspelt ‘mayonaise’. The pun-merchants had a field day this week and there were several Cluedo- and Wodehouse-inspired entries. The winners take £30, D.A. Prince pockets £35. Keith hadn’t listened properly.

In Competition No. 2899 you were invited to write a poem commemorating the birth of Princess Charlotte of Cambridge. The impetus for this comp was Carol Ann Duffy’s failure to deliver the goods. This made some people very cross, but as the official website of the British Monarchy makes clear, modern laureates are under no obligation on this front: ‘It is up to the individual poet to decide whether or not to produce poetry for national occasions or royal events such as weddings and funerals.’ Some may even argue that it was a wise decision on Duffy’s part; after all, previous laureates have produced royal-inspired verses that might have been better left unwritten. In any case, you stepped into the breach with gusto.

In Competition No. 2898 you were invited to give an update on one of the children in Cautionary Tales who lived to tell the tale. Belloc’s gallery of kiddie delinquents suffered particularly unpleasant comeuppances — being eaten, feet upwards, by a lion, and so on. Of those who did escape with their lives, weepy Lord Lundy and Algernon (who narrowly missed killing his sister with a loaded gun) were the most popular subjects in this comp. Max Ross’s entry, in which Algernon grows up to be a jihadi, had a chilling topical twist: ‘Thus, in the best religious fashion,/ Al-gee indulged his boyhood passion’. Both Mae Scanlan and Chris O’Carroll saw a glittering future for Franklin Hyde, digger of dirt, as a member of the press.

In Competition No. 2897 you were asked for a job application by a well-known writer, living or dead. Inspiration for this comp came from a young Hunter S. Thompson’s characteristically unorthodox pitch for a position at the Vancouver Sun. An unflattering portrait of his relationship with a previous employer — ‘The man despised me, of course, and I had nothing but contempt for him’ — is followed by an attack on journalists en masse, who are, he says, ‘dullards, bums, and hacks …stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity’. The godfather of gonzo didn’t get the job. Commendations to Peter Goulding, R.M. Goddard and Josh Ekroy. The winners take £25. Alan Millard pockets the extra fiver.

In Competition No. 2896 you were invited to take Kipling’s ‘If’ and recast it on behalf of a politician on the campaign trail. In an interview with the New Republic in 1985, Mario Cuomo said that politicians campaign in poetry and govern in prose. And Hugo Rifkind, in conversation on Radio 4 with the poet Ian McMillan about the relationship between politicians and poetry, noted that ‘If’ is often cited by politicians as moral inspiration. So it seemed like a good idea to give you the chance to put a twist on Kipling’s rousing poem, on behalf of one of the contenders in the current campaign as they neared the finishing post. G.M. Davis, Nick Grace and R.M. Goddard earn commendations.

In Competition No. 2895 you were invited to submit a poem describing a meal with a well-known poet. Sylvia Fairley tucked, somewhat reluctantly, into albatross with Coleridge, D.A. Prince shared cocoa with Wendy Cope and Rob Stuart enjoyed a curry with Dante. Well done, all: it was a top-notch entry. The winners take £25. Frank McDonald nabs £30.   ‘How do you like your eggs?’ the waiter says And with a smile Elizabeth replies: ‘How do I like them? Let me count the ways: I like them scrambled, sometimes served with fries; Or smiling at me like a golden sun Inviting me to spill delicious yolk; Or boiled hard as when in Easter fun I used to roll them, like religious folk.’ I touch her hand and say: ‘Let’s take them fried.

In Competition No. 2894 you were invited to submit a paean to a famous racehorse. Thanks to David Pearn, who suggested what proved to be an excellent competition. P.C. Parrish, Roger Theobald and Peter Goulding impressed, but I could almost hear the thunder of hooves as I read Chris O’Carroll’s bonus-fiver-winning entry. His fellow winners take £25 each. O equine Nelson, crippled yet victorious, The bone disease that made your gait laborious Rendered the glory you achieved more glorious. You suffered and did not succumb, Red Rum!   Great hero of the greatest steeplechase, Thrice in a five-year span you won the race, And also finished twice in second place. Such prowess strikes us dumb, Red Rum, Red Rum!   Even abstainers love your ardent spirit.