Competition

In Competition No. 2607 you were invited to submit a piece of verbless prose (present participles used as adjectives or nouns were permissible). ‘Invaders, dictators, usurpers of our literature,’ boomed the French writer Michel Thaler in the preface to his verb-free novel Le train de nulle part, published in 2004. His hatred of the doing word was such that he organised a symbolic, and well-attended, burial ceremony for it at the Sorbonne. There was a revolutionary mood in the ranks this week, with mutterings in the entry about the pointlessness of this kind of challenge. But it did produce a lively and varied postbag that was a pleasure to judge. On particularly cracking form were David Silverman, Esdon Frost and Seree Zohar.

In Competition No. 2606 you were invited to imagine Gordon Brown taking some tips on style from a writer of your choice and submit an extract from the resulting speech. I thought more competitors might have steered the Prime Minister in the direction of Milton or Dryden, given their spin-doctoring credentials. As it was, Shakespeare was the most popular mentor. Drawing on a more modern influence, Basil Ransome-Davies chose as the PM’s template ‘Spain’, Auden’s ‘dishonest’ poem, rhetorically powerful but morally bankrupt — which struck me as appropriate to the times we live in. Thanks to Susan Therkelsen and D.A. Prince for conjuring up the image of Gordon Brown, dub-poet-in-training, channelling Benjamin Zephaniah. One to savour.

In Competition No. 2605 you were invited to compose an anthem for a county of your choice. Some competitors played it straight but many chose to subvert the anthem’s traditional fawning tone. Northants, in particular, got it in the neck, with Greg Whitehead (who lives there) and John Brown (who doesn’t) struggling to find a redeeming feature between them. The postbag been swelled in recent months by a welcome influx of entrants from the US. They were out in force this week, casting an often caustic eye o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave. A lot of entries read well on the page but I couldn’t imagine them being sung anthemically.

In Competition No. 2604 you were invited to submit a passage from a novel that is the product of a collaboration between two unlikely bedfellows. Hot on the heels of eminent literary partnerships past — Somerville and Ross, George and Weedon Grossmith — come such unlikely yet intriguing alliances as Eric Carle and Marcel Proust, Jean Rhys and Capt W.E. Johns, Ian Fleming and Wilkie Collins. P.G. Wodehouse found himself in bed with, among others, Iris Murdoch, Daphne du Maurier and St Mark, though you resisted the temptation to tuck him up with A.A. Milne, which might have produced some entertaining squabbling. Some competitors melded the themes of one author with the style of another; others blended styles. All were on cracking form.

In Competition No. 2603 you were invited to submit a newspaper article on a subject of your choice currently in the news containing as many excruciating puns as possible. I’ve never been a big fan of puns but something of a pundemic broke out in a discussion thread on the web about swine flu — ‘I rang NHS Direct and got crackling on the line’ — and it made me laugh out loud. True to Edgar Allan Poe’s observation ‘The goodness of the true pun is in the direct ratio of its intolerability’, I chortled and winced my way through the entry. Top seed topic-wise was Wimbledon, which produced various painful permutations on ‘Murray mints net profit’. Graham Grafton was unlucky to be squeezed out of the winning line-up, printed below.

In Competition No. 2602 you were invited to submit a poem in praise of urban living. The countryside’s praises have been well sung by poets; cities’ less so, although Wordsworth had his head turned by the early-morning view from Westminster Bridge. There are seven winners this week so I’ll pause only to offer warm commendations to Martin Elster, G. McIlraith and David Mackie. The magnificent seven, printed below, get £20 each. Shirley Curran nabs £25. Say not commuting naught availeth, That bendy buses are in vain, The traffic jam yields not, nor faileth, And misery packs the morning train. For first impressions may be liars; It may be, in yon fog concealed, Are gleaming now the city spires And, will, by noon, possess the field.

In Competition No. 2601 you were invited to submit snippets of misleading advice for tourists visiting Britain. You were at your cruel and mischievous best this week; the entry was a magnificent compendium of misinformation. There were a lot of like minds out there. J. Seery’s ‘In public toilets it is considered rude not to engage the man in the next urinal in jovial conversation’ was echoed by many. Equally popular were variations on D.A.

Lucy Vickery presents the latest competition In Competition No. 2600 you were invited to submit a poem containing the first or last line ‘Whenever you see a rhinoceros’. Inspiration for this comp came from Philip.mortimer (who signed himself with an email address only), who sent me a copy of a letter from Richard Jebb to the widowed American intellectual and socialite Carrie Slemmer, whom he later married.

In Competition No. 2599 you were invited to step into the shoes of a well-known writer, past or present, and give their account, in verse or prose, of a career path they might have taken. The assignment was inspired by the Observer’s ‘My other life’ column, in which writers reveal their fantasy job. Jan Morris, for example, harbours a desire to take to the waves: ‘If I weren’t me, I would like to be a ship...’. No ships in a large and excellent entry, but step forward Jane Austen, stripper; John Betjeman, trapeze artist; Harold Pinter, florist; Geoffrey Chaucer, astronaut; and John Samson’s Ernest Hemingway, stand-up comedian (‘Which painter had both inside and outside pissoir? Two-loos Lautrec.

In Competition No. 2598 you were invited to provide pithy definitions of Hell. Thanks to Michael Cregan, who proposed this competition and reminded me of Kim Howells MP’s unpopular pronouncement that his idea of Hell was three Somerset folk singers. The folk tradition didn’t crop up in the entry, but you are clearly not fans of the avant-garde; Harrison Birtwistle and John Cage in particular (‘Hell is full of music, all of it Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s’: Adrian Fry). Gerard Benson and Paul Griffin narrowly missed the cut this week. The winners, printed below, get £25 each.

In Competition No. 2597 you were invited to submit a report written by a social worker on a character from Shakespeare. Congratulations all round: you were on top form. All the biggies — Hamlet, Lear, the Macbeths, Richard III — were subjected to the beady if sometimes myopic eye of social services. There were some sparkling examples of death by jargon, among which Adrian Fry stood out. Admirable though a determination to see the good in people is, the blind optimism in some of your reports had a chilling topical resonance.

In Competition No. 2596 you were invited to submit an alphabet primer designed for children of the Noughties. A far cry from the piety and moral lessons of primers past, yours were designed for a generation-in-waiting of Heat-reading (J is generally for Jade), debt-ridden (‘Y’s for the Year the economy shrank, Z’s for Zilch that’s in the bank.’: Tim Raikes), violent (K almost always spells knife), illiterate (‘Z is for xenophobia’: Phil Thomas), egocentric (‘M is for me before everyone’: Michael Cregan), appearance-obsessed (B is mostly for botox) technophiles (Facebook, Twitter, etc, etc).

In Competition No. 2595 you were invited to submit a poem incorporating the titles of at least six Alfred Hitchcock films. On one of my aimless ambles along the information highways and byways, I stumbled upon a quote by Fellini describing The Birds as a ‘filmic poem’, which got me thinking about a Hitchcock-related comp. The master of stylish suspense made more than 50 films, so there were plenty of titles to choose from. Most of you used more than six, and although I wasn’t awarding points on that score, hats off to Jim Hayes, who managed to cram in a stonking 45. W.J. Webster, George Simmers, Michael Brereton and Ray Kelley are unlucky losers. The winners, printed below, get £25 each. Alan Millard gets £30.

In Competition No. 2594 you were invited to submit a short story beginning ‘It was the wrong number that started it...’ and ending ‘P.S. Sorry I forgot to give you the mayonnaise.’ In case you were wondering, the first line is the opening of City of Glass by Paul Auster and the final one is the conclusion to Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America. Both rank in the American Book Review’s top hundred first/last lines of novels. The comp generated a gratifyingly weighty postbag in which transposed digits, con artists and murderous spouses featured strongly. I liked Keith Norman’s snapshot of salad rage, and was equally impressed by Sid Field, Rosemary Fisher and Eric Grunwald. The winners are printed below and are rewarded with £25 each.

In Competition No. 2593 you were invited to submit a Dear John letter in the style of a poet or author of your choice. These days, dispatching a loved one generally involves texting ‘u r dumped’ or ‘i h8 u’ and pressing send. This comp was prompted by a longing for a return to the time when giving the heave-ho was a protracted business; when jilters sat hunched over a blank sheet of paper for hours on end, agonising over the right choice of words. You were out in force this week, both veterans and newcomers. Verse outnumbered prose by a long way. Robert Burns and Elizabeth Barrett Browning featured strongly, while Joan Hunter Dunn was consigned to the scrapheap with great panache by Katie Mallett and G.M. Davis.

In the dog’s dinner that was Competition No. 2592 you were invited to submit a poem entitled ‘The Name’ in which each line either was an anagram of the name of a well-known poet or contained an anagram of the same. There are two winners in the first category; three in the second. The first version elicited politely expressed howls of protest from some corners — one competitor likened it to the ‘intellectual equivalent of a full body wax’; mark II produced a collective sigh of relief, though some doughty souls, having already struggled through a week of anagram hell, felt compelled to stick with the original brief. It was acceptable to use either surnames only or the full monty. General congratulations: it was a pig of an assignment.

In Competition No. 2591 you were invited to submit an extract from either a gripping thriller or a bodice-ripping romance containing half a dozen pieces of inconsequential information. Your entries not only made me laugh out loud but also armed me with a mine of useless information with which to bring conversations to a grinding halt should the need arise. I have learnt, for example, that it takes four hours to hard-boil an ostrich egg; that Oxford Circus Tube station has 14 escalators; and that Georges Simenon required sexual intercourse thrice daily. Commendations to Marion Shore, Michael Limb, Steve Baldock and Rosemary Fisher, but top dog this week is Basil Ransome-Davies, who bags the bonus fiver. The other winners, printed below, get £25 each.

In Competition No. 2590 you were invited to submit a poem in praise of a form of asceticism. But first, a revision to the brief for last week’s competition no. 2592. I meant to ask for a poem in which each line contains an anagram of the name of a well-known poet. It would be unfair on those brave souls who have already entered to change the comp completely, so instead it will be split into two categories, with three winners in each. Those who wish to stick to the original brief may do so (but beware: one veteran competitor’s entry was accompanied by a note describing the experience as ‘nightmarish’, and there is a discussion thread in cyberspace entitled ‘Speccie Anagram Hell’).

In Competition No. 2589 you were invited to submit an extract from the school essay of a well-known figure past or present, aged eight, entitled ‘What I Did On My Holidays’. It was a large and vivid entry, and competition was hot for a place in the winners’ enclosure. Those narrowly pipped to the post include Adrian Fry’s scary eight-year-old John Stuart Mill: ‘We stopped at a fish and chip stall where, as a philosophical investigation, Father attempted to order only “and”; the linguistic and ontological implications arising from this incident proved unexpectedly sustaining.’ And J.C.H. Mounsey’s John Prescott, clearly already struggling with anger-management issues, who comes to blows with a donkey.

In Competition No. 2588 you were invited to submit spiced-up children’s stories or poems. In the interests of good taste, I steered you in the direction of sauciness rather than smut, but perhaps I needn’t have bothered. According to a book by the amateur historian Chris Roberts, sexual wickedness and political subversion lurk behind the innocuous façade of many popular playground rhymes. Children trilling ‘Jack and Jill’ are inadvertently singing about the loss of virginity, he claims; while ‘Oranges and Lemons’ is a rude wedding song.