Lucy Vickery

In Competition No. 3077 you were invited to submit a sonnet with the name of a Shakespearean character hidden in each line This one pulled in a bumper haul of entries, from old hands and newcomers alike. While some competitors described the challenge as ‘fun’, others greeted it with a squeal of horror. C. Paul Evans, for example: ‘The mother of all horrors, what a comp,/ A theme to turn my ashy locks to dust!…’ The shoehorning in of names occasionally led to some stilted lines, but there were bursts of remarkable fluency too. In an entry full of witty touches and clever flourishes, commendations go to David Silverman, Chris O’Carroll, Jan Snook and Julia Griffin; a prize of £20 belongs to each of those printed below.

In Competition No. 3076 you were invited to submit seriously misguided love poems. You seemed to embrace this task especially wholeheartedly, and I admired your powers of invention in finding so many ways of making my toes curl. Even Brexit got a look-in: ‘Let me be your Brexit backstop/ I will never set you free…’ (Ian Barker). Dishonourable mentions go to Hamish Wilson and David Shields. The winners take £25 each. The extra fiver is Brian Murdoch’s.   Let me compare thee to this bag of chips, For you are as desirable. They taste Just slightly salty, like a woman’s lips And steam invitingly, fresh, hot, and chaste. In shape each single chip is uniform And you are also slim, pale, not too long, And nicely firm.

In Competition No. 3075 you were invited to submit poems by Donald Trump.   The Beautiful Poetry of Donald Trump, which is the brainchild of Rob Sears, represents the fruits of Mr Sears’s efforts to find evidence of the President’s sensitive, poetic side in his tweets and transcripts. The verses in the book are stitched together from Trump’s own words, and promise to reveal ‘a hitherto hidden Donald, who may surprise and delight both students and critics alike’.   There were some excellent candidates for volume two in an entry in which haikus were especially popular —‘Terrible! Just found/Obama had my wires tapped./-McCarthyism!

In Competition No. 3074 you were invited to submit a scam letter ghostwritten by a well-known author, living or dead.   Falling for a scam is costly and tedious (and more easily done than you might think), but the comedian James Veitch found a silver lining when he decided to engage with his persecutors: the ensuing correspondence — lengthy, labyrinthine and often hilarious — went on to form the basis of a popular TED talk and book.   It was a tricky assignment, judging by the smallish postbag, but you made some clever choices of author whose prose style lent itself well to the art of phishing: poor spelling (Molesworth via Geoffrey Willans); apparently outlandish claims (Kafka). The winners, printed below, earn £25 each.

In Competition No. 3073 you were invited to submit a short story in the Gothic style with a topical twist.   The seed of this challenge was the recent reopening of Strawberry Hill House and Garden, the neo-Gothic creation of Horace Walpole, whose 1764 chiller The Castle of Otranto is regarded as the first Gothic novel.   Russell Clifton deployed the framing device, updated for contemporary sensibilities: ‘Gathered about the campfire that October evening in Lark Wood, someone suggested we tell horror stories.

In Competition No. 3072 you were invited to supply a short verse biography of a well-known figure from history.   In a commendable entry, notables long gone — Diotisalvi, Vercingetorix the Gaul, Dr Dee — rubbed shoulders with those still very much with us — Anthony Weiner, Donald Trump, Boris Johnson. There were borrowings from Edward Lear and Lennon and McCartney (‘BoJo was a clown who thought he was a leader/ Made it to King Charles Street too…’) as well as echoes of Ogden Nash.   An honourable mention goes to Brian Allgar for getting into the Halloween spirit with his life of Vlad the impaler. On equally eye-catching form were D.A. Prince, Sylvia Fairley, Bill Greenwell, Douglas G. Brown and W.J. Webster, who submitted a concrete poem.

In Competition No. 3071 you were invited to supply a demotivational poem.   This was your opportunity to come up with a bracing antidote to the world-view peddled by an eye-wateringly lucrative self-help industry that feeds on a mix of insecurity and the aspirational narcissism du jour.   You came at the challenge from various angles, but the opening to Tracy Davidson’s entry speaks for many:   It doesn’t matter what you do in life, It’s just a constant loop of pointless shite.   Honourable mentions go to Adrian Fry’s paean to the power of no and to Douglas G. Brown’s 21st-century spin on Longfellow’s ‘Psalm of Life’. The winners, printed below, earn £25 each.

In Competition No. 3070 you were invited to provide a poem with the title ‘When I Grow Up I Want to Be [insert name here]’.   Performance poet Megan Beech was so incensed by the abuse heaped by Twitter trolls on her idol Mary Beard that she wrote a poem called ‘When I Grow Up I Want to Be Mary Beard’ (‘an academic and a classy lady to boot’). Which is what gave me the idea for this challenge.   Another classicist, the esteemed Peter Jones, was the object of W.J. Webster’s affection. Otherwise it was an eclectic entry that ranged from the Dalai Lama to Donald Trump. Commendations to Alan Millard, Douglas G. Brown and Paul Carpenter, who wants to be Rod Liddle when he grows up. The winners earn £25 each.

In Competition No. 3069 you were invited to provide a spoof version of the song ‘My Favourite Things’ for the constituency/demographic of your choice. I decided to set this comp after stumbling across the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic recast as it might have been sung by an elderly Julie Andrews (‘Maalox and nose drops and needles for knitting,/ Walkers and handrails and new dental fittings…’).

In Competition No. 3068 you were invited to provide a sonnet in reverse, using as your model Rupert Brooke’s ‘Sonnet Reversed’, which turns upside-down both the form — it begins on the rhyming couplet — and the Petrarchan concept of idealised love, starting on a romantic high but ending in prosaic banality.   This challenge produced a delightfully varied and engaging entry. Honourable mentions go to Basil Ransome-Davies, Jennifer Pearson, David Shields, George Simmers and Philip Roe. The winners, printed below, are rewarded with £20 each.   Six days to build the Cosmos! I was hot! With stars and planets, galaxies, the lot — And life! Amoebae, microbes, dinosaurs, Crustaceans, fish… and so on down the line.