Competition

In Competition 2813 you were invited to submit an application in verse, from the poet of your choice, for the position of poet laureate. There were robust bids from poets who were passed over for the laureateship on account of their questionable politics — Pope, for example, and Milton — as well as from those that made the grade: Betjeman, Hughes, Wordsworth and Nahum Tate all threw their hat in the ring. Other eloquent pleas came from McGonagall, who would surely have challenged Alfred Austin for the crown of worst rhymester, Ogden Nash and Dylan Thomas. Mae Scanlan, Gerard Benson, Mike Morrison, Sylvia Fairley and Paul Evans were unlucky losers. The winners take £30 each. Alanna Blake earns £35.

In Competition No. 2812 you were invited to provide a poem celebrating bookshops. Space is tight, which leaves room only for a congratulatory slap on the back all-round but especially to unlucky losers Max Ross, who submitted a clever acrostic, Gerard Benson, James Leslie-Melville, Lydia Shaxberd, Alison Zucker and Annette Field. The prizewinners below earn £25 each. W.J. Webster takes the bonus fiver. Let’s all now give a big and grateful hand To firms whose livelihood is print, retail: Each member of this much beleaguered band Plays its own part in keeping books for sale. Not always loved, the large emporial stores (Where volumes are the measure of their trade), Show how the house of books has many floors And bears an aura that we can’t let fade.

In Competition 2811 you were invited to take an existing word and alter it by a) adding a letter; b) changing a letter; and c) deleting a letter; and to supply definitions for all three new words.   First of all, apologies for any unintentional ambiguity in the brief. Most of you got it but a few complained that my instructions weren’t as clear as they might have been. The idea was to revert to the original word at each stage of the exercise.   This challenge goes down a storm over at the Washington Post, which regularly throws down the gauntlet to followers of its magnificent ‘Style Invitational’ contest. It proved equally popular this side of the pond and the entries came flooding in.

In Competition 2810 you were invited to write a light-hearted poem about a serious subject. I suggested you take a look at J.B.S. Haldane’s comic poem ‘Cancer is a funny thing’ to get an idea of what I was after. Another source of inspiration might have been my predecessor Jaspistos, the poet James Michie, who treated the big subjects — life, illness, death — with an exquisitely deft, witty touch. Here is ‘Cancer, or the Biter Bit’,  written shortly before he died: ‘I used to fancy crabmeat as a treat:/ Now Crab’s the epicure, and I’m the meat.’ It was a large entry but the standard was on the patchy side. Still, some excelled.

In Competition 2809 you were invited to submit a letter liberally sprinkled with evidence of an imperfect grasp of foreign languages. In his 1946 essay ‘Politics and the English Language’ George Orwell took a pop at the self-conscious use of foreign words and expressions: ‘Cul de sac, ancien régime, deus ex machina, mutatis mutandis, status quo, Gleichschaltung, Weltanschauung, are used to give an air of culture and elegance ... Bad writers ... are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones...’ They may be annoying and pretentious, but the would-be cosmopolitan sophisticates that Orwell rails against provide rich comic potential, which you mined with panache.

In Competition 2808 you were invited to invent a new addition to the genre that already includes Tartan Noir and Nordic Noir. This was another invitation to leap aboard the latest literary bandwagon. The new noirs stretched from Devon to space via Middle Earth and Antarctica. You didn’t allow yourselves to be pinned down by geography, though. Basil Ransome-Davies is the proud progenitor of Expat Noir and pockets £30, while the rest of the winners earn £25.   Commissaire Lemaître studied the transcripts, baffled and despondent. With all their blogging and emailing the English seemed obsessed by mundane grouches, and for ever in need of advice or consolation. Requests for good yoga classes and hairdressers. Complaints of French inefficiency and greed.

In Competition 2807 you were invited to submit a hatchet job by a well-known author of your choice on a book or poem by another well-known writer. This challenge was inspired by the Omnivore’s magnificent Hatchet Job of the Year award, which it describes as ‘a crusade against dullness, deference and lazy thinking’. In 1865 the award might well have gone to Henry James for his brutal review of Our Mutual Friend for the Nation magazine. ‘Our Mutual Friend is ...the poorest of Mr Dickens’s works. And it is poor with the poverty not of momentary embarrassment but of permanent exhaustion.’    You were at your caustic best this week. Commendations go to D.A. Prince and Carl Tanner and the winners take £25 each. G.M.

In Competition 2806 you were invited to submit alternative endings for well-known novels or poems.   A Farewell to Arms, The Special Edition, gives Hemingway fans the opportunity to look at the 47 alternative endings that he played with before making what was clearly an agonising choice. Some are more blunt, some more optimistic than the one he went with in the end.   This was a popular assignment. The prizewinners, in what was a strong entry, take £25 each. Chris O’Carroll bags the extra fiver. Honourable mentions go to unlucky losers G.M. Davis, Ray Kelley, Lettice Buxton, Philip Machin, Rob Stuart, Frank McDonald and Brian Murdoch. The Wedding-Guest he looks askance At the hoar and wordy wight, And cries, ‘No more, thou grey-beard loon!

In Competition 2805 you were invited to submit toe-curlingly bad analogies. Congratulations! You obliged with a stream of analogies glorious in their overwrought, tasteless, laboured awfulness. The first five competitors printed below get £15 each. Basil Ransome-Davies and Adrian Fry take £10 and the remaining half-dozen pocket a fiver each.   Her kisses were like wine: not plonk, either (though equally not the kind of austere vintage that stands aloof from all but connoisseurs) — more like a respectable yet reasonably priced Cabernet-Shiraz blend that would definitely have you coming back for another glug.

In Competition 2804 you were invited to supply a poem containing as many ingenious rhymes as possible. Ogden Nash, one of the great rhymesters of recent times, said, ‘I think in terms of rhyme, and have since I was six years old.’ And though rhyme may fall in and out of favour, its power is undeniable: from early childhood its soothing pulse aids memory and satisfies the mind’s craving for pattern. The winners earn £25 each. Brian Allgar takes £30.   Though ‘Mozart’ denotes art, we don’t give a goat’s fart For Cosi Fan Tutte or Don Giovanni; They shove down our throats art that’s high as a stoat’s fart— We’d rather watch footie with beer and a sarnie.   If somebody quotes art, we put on our coats.

In Competition 2803 you were invited to supply a nostalgic poem about a product that is no longer available. I found myself transported back to the good old days of the Hillman Imp, Spangles and — among many other lost but not forgotten delights — Dr J. Collis Browne. ‘Oh for a taste of Fuller’s Walnut Cake,’ sighed Dorothy Pope. Alan Millard expressed an equally heartfelt longing for the return of the original Amstrad computer, with its floppy discs and lurid green LocoScript. And for John Whitworth, life has been considerably less interesting since the disappearance of the Seebakrascope, a small, backward-pointing periscope marketed in the 1950s, which considerably livened up a day at the beach.

In Competition 2802 you were invited to supply a poem on the subject of your choice in which the final letter of each line becomes the first letter of the next line.   As usual with this type of technical challenge, strenuous accusations of sadism were directed judge-wards: many entrants echoed Brian Allgar’s sentiments below.   It was a reasonable turnout, though, and I hope that £30 apiece for the winners will offset the agony somewhat. Honourable mentions go to Bill Greenwell, Janet Kenny, Graham King and Tim Raikes.   W.J. Webster’s entry, in which form and content work well together, earns him the bonus fiver. Why is it that I chase my tail, Loopily as any dog, Going round to no avail Like a disconnected cog?

In Competition 2801 you were invited to rewrite, in pompous and prolix style, any well-known simple poem.   Space is on the tight side so, pausing only to congratulate and commiserate with the longer-than-usual list of those who narrowly missed out — Mae Scanlan, Mary Holtby, Nigel Stuart, George Simmers, Rob Stuart, Ray Kelley, Adrian Fry (‘Jack Sprat possessed a remarkable antipathy to the consumption of adipose matter’) and Robert Schechter (‘This Be Not Standard Metrical Prosody’), take a bow — it’s over to the stellar prizewinners below, who earn £25 each.   Chris O’Carroll takes £30 for his elaboration on Ogden Nash’s four-line reflection on the best tool for ice-breaking (‘Candy is dandy...’).

In Competition No. 2799 you were invited to submit a poem about smells. Edward Thomas’s wonderfully evocative poem ‘Digging’ inspired this challenge:  ‘Today I think/ Only with scents, — scents dead leaves yield,/ And bracken, and wild carrot’s seed,/ And the square mustard field...’ Thanks to Brian Allgar, who submitted an entry that missed the deadline but brightened the judge’s day. Other star performers were Brian Murdoch, Martin Parker — ‘time to turn fetid, malodorous armpits/ to temptingly sensual, sweet-smelling charmpits’ — Robert Schechter, John MacRitchie and D.A. Prince. The six entries printed below earn their authors £25 each. The extra fiver goes to W.J. Webster.

In Competition No. 2798 you were invited to choose one of the following real headlines from regional newspapers — ‘W. Norwood “Curry Cat” murder latest’, ‘Badger shot by St Ives locksmith’, ‘“Smug” Swans attack dalmatian’ — and to submit the full report behind one of them. ‘Smug Swans attack dalmatian’, from the Ham & High, features in a collection of choice local-paper headlines entitled Whitstable Mum in Custard Shortage (other nuggets include ‘Oven removed from home’ and ‘Road stays open’). The winners earn £25. Adrian Fry takes £30.

In Competition No. 2797 you were invited to  think of the worst possible title for a poem and then write that poem.   Oh, for more space! This challenge brought in a large and excellent entry that fizzed with the spirit of McGonagall and McKittrick Ros.   I don’t have space to commend all I’d like to, but take a bow, Chris O’Carroll (‘I taste better than I smell’), Jerome Betts (‘From Verrucaria Maura to Parmelia Saxatilis’), Josh Ekroy (‘Ode on a Teenage Problem Child’), George Simmers (‘The Niceness of Jimmy Savile’), Graham King (‘I floss my nostrils daily’) and Adrian Fry (‘Your Oblong Face’). The winners take £25; W.J. Webster £30.

In Competition No. 2796 you were invited to submit a poem about a minor ailment written by a hypochondriac. Brian Dillon, in his book Tormented Hope: Nine Hypochondriac Lives, gives a vivid description of the hypochondriac’s mental and emotional landscape: ‘You listen constantly, in a kind of trance, for communications from your body; it is as if you have become a medium, and your organs a company of fretful ghosts, whispering their messages from the other side.’ Among the body parts that whispered especially insistently and alarmingly in the entry were noses, feet and fingers. I was entertained by Rob Stuart’s double dactylic contribution and impressed by Sylvia Smith, Anne du Croz, John Whitworth, Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead, Annette Field and Paul Evans.

In Competition No. 2795 you were invited to submit a palinode (a poem retracting a previously expressed opinion) on behalf of a well-known poet.   We’ve done this before and the results were so impressive I thought we should give it another go. This time round I reluctantly disqualified some extremely funny, well-made poems because they didn’t quite meet the brief. Unlucky losers included Martin Parker, Mae Scanlan, Ray Kelley, John Whitworth and Robert Schechter, whose pithy Bardic about-turn raised a chuckle: ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?/ Nah’.   Chris O’Carroll takes the extra fiver. The rest earn £30. Again upon my couch I lay. My mood was vacant, even pensive. What blissful inward-eye display Awaited? I was apprehensive.