Competition

In Competition No. 2873 you were invited to submit a poem in praise or dispraise of a well-known building. It was a strong entry this week and Alanna Blake, Philip Roe, Basil Ransome-Davies and W.J. Webster were unlucky losers. Frank McDonald took me at my word and submitted an actual concrete poem, which made it into the winning line-up. His fellow victors take £25 each and this week’s bonus fiver goes to Brian Allgar for a double dactyl that would have pleased Guy de Maupassant. Maupassant hated the Eiffel Tower — ‘this tall, skinny pyramid of iron ladders, this giant and disgraceful skeleton’ — so much that he often sought refuge from it by eating lunch in its restaurant, the only place he couldn’t see it from.

In Competition No. 2872 you were invited to submit an author’s acknowledgments page that contains subtle indications that no thanks at all are due to those mentioned. E.E. Cummings does the anti-dedication in style in his 1935 volume No Thanks, which he self-published with financial help from his mother. Its dedication page contains a concrete poem printed in the shape of a funeral urn that opens with the words ‘NO THANKS TO...’ and goes on to list the names of the 14 publishing houses who had turned the collection down. This comp called for an altogether more softly-softly approach, with any ill will on the part of the author to be cunningly concealed beneath a veneer of gratitude. Christopher L.

In Competition No. 2871 you were invited to submit a dialogue in verse between man and God. The tone of the discourse was far from cordial, ranging from boredom and -disinterest to outright hostility. Here’s Alanna Blake’s disgruntled deity: ‘I’m old and growing deaf and very tired/ These are my final words: I have retired.’ Loss of faith, it seems, works both ways. Honourable mentions go to Peter Goulding and Emma Mascarenhas. The winners below earn £25 each. W.J. Webster gets £30. Forgive me, God, but might I know What on Earth you do these days? If you’re at work it doesn’t show Even in mysterious ways.

In Competition No. 2870 you were invited to submit an autumn villanelle. Stephen Fry likes villanelles. The form inspired him to write his book The Ode Less Travelled (subtitled Unlocking the poet within). I like them too — and so do you, if the size of the entry is anything to go by. A round of applause for the winners below, who take £30 each.   Autumn has come and summer dreams are dead And though she compensates with golden trees Beyond her kind deceit death lies ahead.   She wears a smile and moves with gentle tread And yet her tone will change as time decrees; Autumn has come and summer dreams are dead.   Too soon her transient beauty will be shed And withered blooms will disappoint her bees. Beyond her kind deceit death lies ahead.

In Competition No. 2869 you were invited to submit a poem on any theme as it might have been written by the diminutive, myopic warden of New College, Oxford Revd W.A. Spooner, whose gift for mangling words bequeathed us such comic gems as ‘The Lord is a shoving leopard’. Not everyone was laughing, though. ‘Am I the only one who finds this exercise extraordinarily difficult?’ wailed Brian Murdoch. He’s got a point. Judging the entries was a brain-addling process, so goodness knows what torture it must have been to write them. The winners take a well deserved £25 each. Sylvia Fairley snaffles £30.   Send my abandoned tart to hell In flames, my fuel crate; The witch I’m bedding sent a note, A catalogue of hate.

In Competition No. 2868 you were invited to take something mundane and filter it through the lens of magic realism. I have been meaning to set this comp since the death of Gabriel Garcia Marquez earlier this year. Master of the fantastical, Marquez conjures a world in which the arrival of one character is heralded by a swarm of yellow butterflies, the death of another by a light rain of yellow flowers. The entry was peppered with echoes of One Hundred Years of Solitude, but there were traces of Bulgakov too. Frank Upton wins £30. The rest take £25. ‘Thank you for calling Megacorp. Your call is as unimportant to us as every human action and may be recorded for purposes that are unclear. All our operators have identical names right now.

In Competition No. 2867 you were invited to add a final stanza to a well-known poem. Nicholas Stone imagined how Coleridge might have continued had it not been for the intrusion of the Person of Porlock. Tracy Davidson’s coda to ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ painted a picture of interspecies conjugal bliss turned sour. And Penn Harvey added a final instalment to Wallace Stevens’s chilly modernist masterpiece ‘The Emperor of Ice-Cream’. There were strong performances all round this week and it was difficult to whittle down the entry. Bill Greenwell, Katie Mallett, Alanna Blake, Mike Morrison and Brian Murdoch were pipped to the post, but only just, by the prizewinners below, who are rewarded with £15 each. Chris O’Carroll takes the bonus fiver.

In Competition No. 2866 you were invited to pick a well-known poem and write a short story with the same title using the poem’s opening and closing lines to begin and end the piece. I liked Mike Morrison’s use of the first line of Eliot’s ‘Whispers of Immortality’ as a springboard into an intriguing snapshot of the lexicographer Noah Webster. Equally impressive was Josh Ekroy’s imagining of an alternative and far from uneventful life for Mr Bleaney, who is reincarnated as a ruthless terrorist. Other star performers were Max Ross, Sid Field, John O’Byrne and Ashani Lewis. The winners earn £25 each. G.M. Davis takes £30. ‘My old flame, my wife!

In Competition No. 2865 you were invited to compose a poet’s elegy for him or herself. This challenge took you down a path trod by poor Chidiock Tichborne, who wrote his own elegy, ‘Tichborne’s Elegy’, in 1586, on the night before his execution, aged 28, for his part in a conspiracy against Elizabeth I. You were all good this week. Commiserations to Peter Smalley, Barbara Smoker, Max Ross, Sylvia Fairley and Chris Gleed, who narrowly missed the cut. The winners earn £25 each. Brian Allgar trousers £30. I’faith, I cannot say which is the worse: To fade into oblivion, forgot, Or for my shade to live on through my verse And mock me that it is, when I am not.

In Competition No. 2864 you were invited to submit an imaginary feature from a newspaper’s health pages extolling the benefits to wellbeing of something traditionally thought to be bad for you. Brian Murdoch cast a new light on excessive boozing: ‘The Romans knew about it, of course, and new guidelines have re-endorsed the values of binge drinking as a regular purgation of the system.’ And if you have always viewed the deep-fried Mars Bar with suspicion, think again: Rob Stuart’s entry argues (not altogether convincingly) that, far from being ‘nutritional Armageddon’, the DFMB actually provides us with the requisite five-a-day.

In Competition No. 2863 you were invited to recast a well-known nursery rhyme in the style of a well-known author. The entry was evenly split between prose and poetry but in general verse worked better. Commendations go to Chris Port, Mike Morrison, Max Ross, Nick MacKinnon, Adrian Fry and Mark Shelton. The winners earn £25 each. Chris O’Carroll takes £30. Once upon a sturdy tuffet sat a maid the world calls Muffet, Dining on a wholesome bowl of dairy oddments, curds with whey. On a sudden, just beside her, she espied a loathsome spider; Cold abhorrence surged inside her. She could find no words to say, No ejaculations suited to convey her deep dismay, Not a single word to say.

In Competition No. 2862 you were invited to submit a poetic preview of when the lights go out. Submissions were impressively varied this week, and kept me thoroughly entertained. Honourable mentions go to Katie Mallett, who had Betjeman in mind (‘Fetch out the candles, Norman…’), and to Sylvia Fairley, who was in double-dactylic mood: ‘Jittery-tickery/ Grid electricity/ won’t last for ever, you’d/ better beware…’ The winners, printed below, are rewarded with £25 each. Alan Millard takes £30.

In Competition No. 2861 you were invited to submit misleading snippets of advice for British tourists travelling abroad. A previous invitation to unleash a tide of misinformation on unsuspecting foreign visitors to the UK elicited such gems as Brian Allgar’s ‘Foreign visitors are always welcome to stroll through Buckingham Palace, and the Queen herself will be delighted to pose for a photo-shoot. If anyone tries to prevent you from entering, simply say: “I’ve come to shoot the Queen.”’ The same spirit of sadistic mischief was on show this time round. As usual with comps of this kind there was repetition. A fair few of you echoed Basil Ransome-Davies’s wise counsel about that ‘quaint British custom’ queueing.

In Competition No. 2860 you were invited to submit a short ode on the death of a pet in unusual circumstances. I was prompted to set this challenge by Thomas Gray’s charming and witty cautionary tale ‘Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes’, which he wrote in 1747 in memory of Horace Walpole’s beloved tabby Selima, whose desire leads her to a watery demise. ‘She stretched in vain to reach the prize./ What female heart can gold despise?/ What cat’s averse to fish?’ D.A. Prince’s winning composition below has strong echoes of Gray and there was plenty of wit and charm on display elsewhere in the entry. Commendations to Poppy McLean, John-Paul Marney, Martin Parker and Anita Howard.

In Competition No. 2859 you were invited to submit an offputting party political broadcast by the Tories, Labour, the Lib Dems, the Greens or Ukip. Basil Ransome-Davies wasn’t alone in revealing the ruthlessness that lurks beneath the tree-hugging veneer of the Greens. He gets an honourable mention, as does Adrian Fry, who recruited Jimmy Savile as Tory spokesman: can’t get more repellent than that. The ones that shone brightest in what was a surprisingly small entry appear below and are rewarded with £25 each. Frank Upton takes the bonus fiver. Sustainability— the word on all our lips. A Green government will put YOU at the heart of sustainability!

In Competition No. 2858 you were invited to imagine that a well-known figure from 20th-century history was a secret poet and to submit a recently discovered example of their versifying. Politicians featured prominently in the entry: there were poignant lines from the pens of Edward Heath and Michael Foot, and here is Adrian Fry’s John Prescott, just getting into his stride: ‘Don’t call me unsophisticated, I’ve been to Villanelle,/ I know me assonance from elbow, I’ve a cracking tale to tell...’ The winners earn £25 each and George Simmers takes this week’s bonus fiver.

In Competition No. 2856 you were invited to recruit a well-known author of your choice to give Phil Neville a masterclass in the art of football commentary. After his commentary debut, unkind comparisons were drawn between Neville’s style and a speak-your-weight machine, and when the England physio was stretchered off injured, a Twitter user speculated that it was because he’d ‘slipped into a coma when a live feed of Phil Neville’s commentary was played into his earpiece’. There was lively and stimulating punditry on offer in the entry, serving as a shining example to Mr Neville. Commendations go to Adrian Fry, Hugh King and Nick Booth. The bonus fiver is D.A. Prince’s; the rest take £25 each.

In Competition No. 2854 you were invited to invent a title for a new cookery book, with a fresh angle, and supply a publisher’s blurb. When it comes to the market for bizarre cookery books, a quick trawl of the web reveals that there is already stiff competition out there. The Star Wars Cookbook (may the sauce be with you) and Cooking in the Nude both caught my eye, and those of you who suggested a roadkill-based approach have been beaten to it by Buck Peterson, who published The Original Road Kill Cookbook in the mid-Eighties (yours, on Amazon, for under a fiver). Commendations to D.A. Prince, Tracy Davidson, Sylvia Fairley and Nicholas Stone, who get applause if not cash. The winners, printed below, pocket £30 each. Adrian Fry takes £35.