Jaspistos

In Competition No. 2425 you were invited to do as Ovid did: give poetic advice as to how to pick up, seduce and keep a lover of either sex. Here’s one of Ovid’s shrewd pieces of advice to girls (my translation, The Modern Library, New York, rush out and buy it): Steer clear of the young professorOf elegance, the too good-looking snappy dresserWho’s always arranging his hair — he’ll tell you a stale,Thousand-times-told tale,But his heart’s a gipsy, it camps, it moves.What can a woman do when the man she lovesIs smoother than she is and, for all she can tell,Has more men than she does as well? Not many of you successfully caught ‘the sweet witty soul of Ovid’, in the happy phrase of a contemporary of Shakespeare.

In Competition No. 2424 you were invited to write a poem naming in each line a startling event which will occur during each month this year, ending with a four-line glimpse of the more distant future. ‘Fasten your seatbelts’ was the consensus. I shall gag myself to make space for the winners, pausing only to mention Adrian Fry’s prediction (optimistic or pessimistic?) that this month will see the Queen’s limericks published in the Times. The prize-takers, printed below, get £25 each, and W.J. Webster nabs the bonus fiver. Thank you, the person who sent me a Christmas card.

In Competition No. 2423 you were invited to write a poem in the voice of a fed-up soldier, of any country or date, far from home. I was apprehensive that most of you would use this invitation to vent your feelings about the unhappy war in Iraq, but I was pleasantly surprised by the variety in time and space of your fractious servicemen (there was only one servicewoman) — a tribesman from the steppes bored in Rome, a redcoat on St Helena after Napoleon’s death, a conscript from Clerkenwell stuck in Wales during Edward I’s campaign, a French quartermaster in Egypt with Napoleon, a German soldier not enjoying Stalingrad.... The prizewinners, printed below, are awarded £25 each, and Keith Norman takes the bonus fiver. A happy new year to you all.

In Competition No. 2422 you were invited to write a poem or a piece of prose entitled ‘Dinner with the Devil’. ‘My meal consisted of an omelette made from eggs seven years past their sell-by date and stuffed with the minced brains of lunatics who never attended church on Sunday’ — Adam Campbell’s menu, reminiscent of Miss Thatcher’s recent gastronomic ordeals on television, struck the sort of flesh-creeping note that Dickens relished at Christmas. But the winners, printed below, were the ones who remained urbane and witty rather than horripilant. They get £25 apiece, and Adrian Fry has the bonus fiver. I wish you all as happy a Christmas as you can contrive.

In Competition No. 2421 you were given an opening couplet of a poem, ‘I knew a girl who was so pure/ She couldn’t say the word manure’ and invited to continue for a further 16 lines. The couplet comes from ‘A Perfect Lady’, a poem by Reginald Arkell (who he?) in The Everyman Book of Light Verse. The lady ends happily cured:She squashes greenfly with her thumb,And knows how little snowdrops come:In fact, the garden she has gotHas broadened out her mind a lot.This was the biggest entry ever. As usual in judging, when skill is equal I incline to the more original. The prizewinners, printed below, take £20 each, and Godfrey Bullard gets the extra fiver.

In Competition No. 2420 you were invited to invent words describing something familiar which fill a need in the English language. The germ of this competition was a book called The Meaning of Tingo which assembles ‘extraordinary words from around the world’, from which I learnt that the Japanese have a single word to describe ‘a woman who appears pretty when seen from behind but not from the front’ and another very useful one which means ‘to try out a new sword on a passer-by’. I make way now for your own glorious neologisms. Each item wins its inventor £4, and Nicholas Hodgson gets the bonus fiver.

In Competition No. 2419 you were invited to supply a poem in free verse beginning ‘I think continually of ...’ ‘...those who were truly great’ completes the first line of a much anthologised poem by Stephen Spender. Free verse has a tendency to slip into something like very rough blank verse, and some of you fell into this trap. Of all the things continually thought about by you I was especially tickled by Paul Griffin’s ‘the Saturday Collectors,/ Mrs Broadworthy, Mr Brisk, and the sisters Payne,/ Always the same four’. The prizewinners, printed below, take £25, and I have no hesitation in awarding the bonus fiver to Noel Petty. I think continually of sex.

In Competition No. 2418 you were given certain rhyme-words in a certain order and invited to write a poem accordingly. The rhymes came from Masefield’s ‘Where They Took Train’ which has a rather unexpected first line, ‘Gomorrah paid so for its holiday’. I hope the old Poet Laureate would be happy rather than horrified at the use his poem is being put to here. The combination of ‘holiday’, ‘inn’ and ‘sin’ inevitably suggested to many of you the scenario of a dirty weekend, so that I found myself awarding brownie points to those competitors who showed originality, not suggestibility. Mae Scanlan, Brian Murdoch, W.J. Webster and G.

In Competition No. 2417 you were given the opening: ‘He was twenty-three and oh! so agonisingly conscious of the fact. The train came bumpingly to a halt ...’ and invited to add 150 or fewer words launching a sensitive and inadequate anti-hero on his fictional adventures. Denis Stone, Huxley’s passenger in Crome Yellow, was the first of a line of maladroit youths whose last mutation was Kingsley Amis’s Jim Dixon. (I reread both books this year and found that the Huxley held up better.) The genre — what Mr Scogan in Crome Yellow calls ‘a novel about the wearisome development of a young man’s character’ — seems to have died out. Commendations to Noel Petty, Alanna Blake and Alan Millard.

In Competition No. 2416 you were invited to reduce the life story of a famous person or a fictional character to three limericks. I was strict about metre and rhyme. A limerick is technically a very conventional form of poetry, and so when my ear was offended I turned my thumb down. And I was certainly not going to countenance ‘neuralgia’ rhyming with ‘Trafalgar’! A third criterion was the necessary biographical element demanded by ‘life story’. Iain Crawford wrote tellingly about John Lennon, but spleen overwhelmed history. Commendations to him, Bernadette Evans, Brian Murdoch and Dominica Roberts. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus fiver is Colin Sydenham’s.

In Competition No. 2415 you were invited to categorise six types of ...walk? drunk? bore? I left it to you. Here is one of Sydney Smith’s types of handshake: ‘The retentive shake — one which, beginning with vigour, pauses as it were to take breath, but without relinquishing its prey, and before you are aware begins again, until you feel anxious as to the result, and have no shake left in you.’ The prize-winners, printed below, get £25 each, and Noel Petty has the bonus fiver. SITTING DOWNThere are many ways of sitting down.

In Competition No. 2414 you were invited to supply some typically trivial twaddle from a gossip column. All my life, from the days of ‘Jennifer’s’ vapid chatter in the Tatler to the more toxic and intrusive modern muck-rakers, I have regarded gossip columnists, along with the paparazzi, as one of the lower forms of life. A son of mine, in search of journalistic experience, was taken on as one. In my eyes he responded admirably by being sacked for ‘unsuitability’ a few weeks later. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus fiver goes to Thomas Loughborough. Enjoy. What’s Millie short for? Because she’s got short legs, of course!

In Competition No. 2413 you were invited to supply a poem such as might have been written by the Revd Spooner. William Archibald Spooner, the myopic, albino warden of New College, was not, as I had always imagined, a Victorian figure: his wardenship was 1903–24 and he died in 1930. As an educationist he would have been shocked if he had overheard his fellow Oxonian Wystan Auden referring dismissively to the poets ‘Sheets and Kelley’ and even more aghast had he lived to witness a feminist theatre group touring Britain in the 1970s under the name Cunning Stunts. My own favourite among his reputed blunders is ‘The Lord is a shoving leopard.’ This competition must have been hard work. I have consequently been lenient in interpreting the term Spoonerism.

In Competition No. 2412 you were invited to supply a ‘jabberwocky’ poem beginning ‘’Twas brillig...’and containing new words of your own invention. By ‘jabberwocky’, which was deliberately lower case, I meant no more than surreal. I wasn’t inviting you to follow Carroll’s monster-slaying scenario, or his metrical scheme, only to match his inventiveness with neologisms in a wacky poem. Many of you over-egged the cake, throwing in so many invented words that I had only a faint idea of what was going on: in ‘Jabberwocky’ it is clear enough, even if you have to guess the meaning of ‘tulgey’ or ‘gimble’.

In Competition No. 2411 you were invited to supply a poem or piece of prose entitled ‘The Last Smoker on Earth’. William Danes-Volkov wrote to me, ‘Anyone attempting this competition should read Garrison Keillor’s brilliant and terrifying story “The Last Cigarette Smoker in America”.’ Terrifying too is Thomas Hood’s poem ‘The Last Man’, in which a man who thinks he is the sole survivor of a global pestilence meets another lonely scavenger, quarrels with him, hangs him, and then realises with horror that there is no one left on earth who can perform the same office for him. Back to smoking (which I gave up a fortnight ago). This was a delightful competition which threw up a great variety of approaches.

In Competition No. 2410 you were provided with opening and closing words and invited to write a story with the above title. The given words were supposed to be the opening and closing ones of a Maclaren Ross story with this title, but owing to a clerical error, in other words my own foolish blunder, the ending I gave you was the ending of a different story by the same author. The correct ending was ‘I felt I deserved it.’ No matter, you grappled well with the problem presented. I especially enjoyed Basil Ransome-Davies’s cheeky opening: ‘The clock on the street corner said six but it was really five centuries or more since it had said anything else.’ The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and Brian Murdoch scoops the extra fiver.

In Competition No. 2409 you were invited to provide a vitriolic review of a generally acknowledged masterpiece by a critic at the time of its appearance. ‘Monsieur Flaubert is not a writer’ was Le Figaro’s stern verdict on Madame Bovary. The Odessa Courier greeted Anna Karenina with ‘Sentimental rubbish ...Show me one page that contains an idea.’ And after seeing A Midsummer Night’s Dream Pepys recorded: ‘The most insipid, ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life.’ I must confess that I too can be numbered among the barbarians: I have never come enjoyably to grips with either Proust or Ulysses, and there’s not much time left for conversion.

In Competition No. 2408 you were given an opening couplet — ‘Oh, plague of plagues! Wherever I turn, French tricks,/ French schemes, French morals, and French politics!’ — and invited to continue either in the modern or the 18th-century mode. The opening couplet came from a contributor to Fraser’s Magazine, a Tory journal, in the late 18th century. Recently our own journal published a poem mocking the Scots, their national character and dress and Wee Frees, ending with the suggested ‘solution’ that they should all be permanently ghettoised behind Hadrian’s Wall.

In Competition No. 2407 you were invited to incorporate 12 words into a plausible piece of prose, using them not in an animal, vegetable or mineral sense. Inadvertently, I made this competition more difficult than the genre usually is by giving you fewer choices of alternative meanings to play with. Consequently I have been lenient in my interpretation of the rules: I allowed capitals (Swede or Sergeant Pepper) and metaphorical uses (copper-bottomed). Two competitors used ‘brass’ in the sense of ‘prostitute’, which is a new one on me. Commendations to Margaret Joy and A. Roberts. The prizewinners, printed below (a stellar group), get £25 each, except for E.J. Davidson, a newcomer, I think, who scoops £30.

In Competition No. 2406 you were invited to write a nostalgic poem about commercial products or brand images that are no longer with us. ‘O my Brylcreem and my Trugel long ago!’ sighed Tony Dawson. ‘Just bring me my Seebakrascope,’ begged John Whitworth (for those of you too young to remember, this was a miniature periscope, advertised in the 1950s, which showed what was going on behind you). Ah, Carter’s Little Liver Pills, Gibbs’ Dentifrice (to protect your ‘ivory castles’), Roboline, Elliman’s Athletic Rub, Fuller’s Walnut Cake, Spangles, the Bisto Kids, Bile Beans, the Rank Gong Man, Gripfix (the glue that smelt of almonds), Antiphlogistine for inflamed bronchials....