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For the latest competition you were challenged to submit an ode to Alexa or Siri. A recent study by Unesco, entitled ‘I’d Blush if I Could’ (Siri’s alarmingly coquettish response to the phrase ‘You’re a slut/bitch’), claimed that submissive female-voiced virtual assistants perpetuate negative, outdated gender stereotypes, and this assignment did seem to bring out
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In Competition 3100 you were invited to pen an ode to Alexa or Siri. A recent Unesco study claimed that submissive female-voiced virtual assistants perpetuate negative, out-dated gender stereotypes, and this assignment did seem to bring out the unreconstructed roguish side in some. You know who you are. The winners below earn £25 each.
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For the latest competition, you were asked to dream up an imaginary animal that is a hybrid of two existing ones and write a poem about it. The discovery, some time ago, that the Romans called a giraffe a ‘camelopard’ (and Thomas Hood wrote an ‘Ode to the Cameleopard’) gave me the initial idea for
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In Competition No. 3099 you were invited to dream up an imaginary animal that is a hybrid of two existing ones and write a poem about it. The discovery, some time ago, that the Romans called a giraffe a ‘cameleopard’ (also the subject of a poem by Thomas Hood) gave me the initial idea
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For the latest competition you were asked to compose a poem that can be read forwards and backwards, i.e. from the top down and the bottom up. I worried, as the entries trickled in, that I had set the bar too high, especially given the anguished comments that accompanied some of them. ‘This was one
From our UK edition
In Competition No. 3098 you were invited to submit a poem that can be read forwards and backwards, i.e. from the top down and the bottom up. I worried, as the entries trickled in, that I had set the bar too high, especially given the anguished comments that accompanied some of them. ‘This was
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The call for poems about Englishness in the style of a well-known poet produced a mostly predictable line-up — from Chesterton, so-called ‘prophet of Brexit’, through Larkin, Betjeman, Brooke, Housman and, of course, Kipling. But it was an American, Ogden Nash, whose pen portrait of us prompted me to set this challenge: Let us pause
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In Competition No. 3097 you were invited to submit a poem about Englishness in the style of a well-known poet. The line-up was mostly predictable — from Chesterton, so-called ‘prophet of Brexit’, through Larkin, Betjeman, Brooke, Housman and, of course, Kipling. But it was an American, Ogden Nash, whose pen portrait of us prompted
From our UK edition
Your latest challenge was to submit a short story that ends ‘I feel like a half-eaten gorgonzola’. Thanks to reader Mark O’Connor, who suggested that this observation which, in case you were wondering, comes from a letter written by Lytton Strachey to his elder brother James on 27 July 1908, might be incorporated into a
From our UK edition
In Competition No. 3096 you were invited to submit a short story that ends ‘I feel like a half-eaten gorgonzola.’ Thanks to reader Mark O’Connor, who suggested that this observation which, in case you were wondering, comes from a letter written by Lytton Strachey to his elder brother James on 27 July 1908, might
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The prompt for this challenge – to submit an elegy by a poet on another poet – was ‘Adonais’, Shelley’s celebrated 55-stanza tribute to Keats. Frank McDonald imagined Keats responding in kind: My heart aches for you, brother Percy Bysshe, Who wept for me although my name was writ In water. Dearest friend, it was
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In Competition No. 3095 you were invited to submit an elegy by a poet on another poet. The prompt for this challenge was ‘Adonais’, Shelley’s celebrated 55-stanza tribute to Keats. Frank McDonald imagined Keats responding in kind: My heart aches for you, brother Percy Bysshe, Who wept for me although my name was
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G.K. Chesterton once observed that ‘poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese’. Well, not the anonymous author of the curious poem that inspired the latest challenge — to submit a ‘Sonnet Found in a Deserted Mad House’. Line eight of this sonnet, which appeared in A Nonsense Anthology (1915), edited by Carolyn
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In Competition No. 3094 you were invited to submit a ‘Sonnet Found in a Deserted Mad House’. G.K. Chesterton once observed that ‘poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese’. Well, not the anonymous author of the curious poem that inspired this challenge: line eight of ‘Sonnet Found in a Deserted Mad House’,
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The latest challenge was to submit an extract from a novel that chronicles the adult life of a well-known fictional hero from children’s stories. I enjoyed Jess McAree’s account of Paddington Bear’s Conrad-esque voyage — ‘evicted by Brexit, residence visa revoked’ — to the heart of darkness in deepest Peru. Hugh King, D.A. Prince and
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In Competition No. 3093 you were invited to submit an extract from a novel that chronicles the adult life of a well-known fictional hero from children’s stories. I enjoyed Jess McAree’s account of Paddington Bear’s Conrad-esque voyage — ‘evicted by Brexit, residence visa revoked’ — to the heart of darkness in deepest Peru. Hugh
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The latest challenge was to compose a spring villanelle. The villanelle – established in France in the 16th century by Jean Passerat with his poem about a lost turtledove – lends itself to themes of loss and time passing, and many of you chose to reflect on the bleaker side of spring. But this overall
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In Competition No. 3092 you were invited to submit a spring villanelle. The villanelle lends itself to themes of loss and time passing, but the somewhat gloomy mood of the entry was offset by how well you rose to the form’s technical challenges. Congratulations all round, but especially to unlucky losers Noah Heyl, R.M. Goddard,
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Your latest challenge was to come up with toe-curlingly bad analogies. This is an idea shamelessly pinched from the Washington Post, whose contests have produced the impressively so-bad-they’re-good ‘Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze’ (Chuck Smith) and ‘Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever’ (Jennifer Hart). Yours, too,
From our UK edition
In Competition No. 3091 you were invited to submit toe-curlingly bad analogies. This is an idea shamelessly pinched from the Washington Post, whose contests have produced the impressively so-bad-they’re good ‘Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze’ (Chuck Smith) and ‘Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever’ (Jennifer Hart).