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The 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’). With this in mind, I invited you to provide a poem
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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
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The idea for the latest challenge, to provide a spoof version of the song ‘My Favourite Things’ for the constituency/demographic of your choice, was prompted by my discovery of a reimagining of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic recast as it might have been sung by an elderly Julie Andrews (‘Maalox and nose drops and needles
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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
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The latest competition asked for a sonnet in reverse, modelled on 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.
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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
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The seed of the latest assignment — to provide a tale of travel misery on behalf of a well-known voyager from the fields of fact or fiction — was a column in the Observer called My Crap Holiday, which invited readers to share their travel horrors: inclement weather, devil children, oven-like bedrooms, Arctic bedrooms, wardrobe-like
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In Competition No. 3067 you were invited to provide a tale of travel misery on behalf of a well-known traveller from the fields of fact or fiction. The seed of this assignment was a column in the Observer called My Crap Holiday, which invited readers to share travel horrors: inclement weather, devil children, oven-like
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The most recent challenge was to submit an ode to a piece of sporting equipment. There is a long and distinguished tradition of verse inspired by sport, going all the way back to Pindar’s odes celebrating ancient Greek athletic achievement. (As London mayor, Boris Johnson commissioned a poem in the style of Pindar to mark
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In Competition No. 3066 you were invited to submit an ode to a piece of sporting equipment. There is a long and distinguished tradition of verse inspired by sport, going all the way back to Pindar’s odes celebrating ancient Greek athletic achievement. (As London mayor, Boris Johnson commissioned a poem in the style of Pindar
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Your latest challenge was to supply a happy ending for a well-known play, poem or novel. Nahum Tate (the worst poet laureate ‘if he had not succeeded Shadwell’, according to Robert Southey) gave King Lear a cheery ending: Lear regains his throne, Cordelia marries Edgar, and Edgar joyfully declares that ‘truth and virtue shall at
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In Competition No. 3065 you were invited to supply a happy ending for a well-known play, poem or novel. Nahum Tate (the worst poet laureate ‘if he had not succeeded Shadwell’, according to Robert Southey) gave King Lear a cheery ending: Lear regains his throne, Cordelia marries Edgar, and Edgar joyfully declares that ‘truth
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The inspiration for the latest challenge, to submit a newspaper leading article exposing the corrupting influence of a seemingly innocuous everyday item, was the revelation, in a recent letter to the Times, that patent leather shoes were outlawed at a British girls’ public school as recently as the 1980s, lest they reflect undergarments and ‘excite
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In Competition No. 3064 you were invited to supply a newspaper leading article exposing the hitherto unsuspected corrupting influence of a seemingly innocuous everyday item. This assignment was inspired by the revelation, in a recent letter to the Times, that patent leather shoes were outlawed at a British girls’ public school as recently as the
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The latest challenge was to submit a poem about puns containing puns. Dryden regarded paronomasia as ‘the lowest and most grovelling kind of wit’; Samuel Johnson took an equally dim view. But this most derided form of humour produced a witty and accomplished entry that elicited only the occasional groan. Robert Schechter’s four-liner – ‘Opun
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In Competition No. 3063 you were invited to submit a poem about puns containing puns. Dryden regarded paronomasia as ‘the lowest and most grovelling kind of wit’; Samuel Johnson took an equally dim view. But this most derided form of humour produced a witty and accomplished entry that elicited only the occasional groan.
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The invitation to compose a Shakespearean-style soliloquy that a contemporary politician might have felt moved to deliver was inspired by Aryeh Cohen-Wade’s imagining, in the New Yorker, how Donald Trump might perform the bard’s soliloquies: ‘Listen – to be, not to be, this is a tough question, OK? Very tough…’ The Donald kept an uncharacteristically
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In Competition No. 3062 you were invited to submit a Shakespearean-style soliloquy that a contemporary politician might have felt moved to deliver. Inspiration for this comp came from Aryeh Cohen-Wade’s imagining, in the New Yorker, of Donald Trump performing Shakespearean soliloquies: ‘Listen — to be, not to be, this is a tough question, OK?
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For the latest competition you were invited to imagine a well-known author who doesn’t normally write in the genre trying their hand at science fiction. In a 2015 interview, the wonderful Ursula K. Le Guin, always a staunch and eloquent defender of the genre, took a pop at writers of literary fiction who move into
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In Competition No. 3061 you were invited to imagine a well-known author who doesn’t normally write in the genre having a go at science fiction and submit an extract from the resulting work. In a 2015 interview, Ursula K. Le Guin, always a staunch and eloquent defender of the genre, took a pop at writers