Lucy Vickery

For Competition 3418 you were invited to provide a pompous leading article on a trivial subject. The ubiquity of ‘Hi’ replacing ‘Dear’; conjoined teabags; the apostrophe (ban it!); the semi-colon (save it!): all featured in a medium-sized, accomplished entry. The half-dozen below stood out and earn their authors the £25 John Lewis vouchers. Our readers will be aware of our unblemished record in reading the runes. And if there is one certain indicator of the unravelling of the fabric of western civilisation, surely it is the unending decline in quality of clothes pegs. Regardless of the emporium from which they are purchased, both plastic and wooden pegs are so woefully constructed that their falling apart may be taken as societal collapse in microcosm.

For Competition 3415 you were invited to submit a lost poem by a well-known poet which makes us see him or her in a new light. There is space only to commiserate with unlucky losers Elizabeth Kay, Alex Steelsmith, Sophie Hannah, Ralph Goldswain and D.A. Prince. The winners below take the £25 John Lewis vouchers. I am an atheistic chap. I like to trash the psalter, And lay some tins of Spam across each silly harvest altar. On every reredos I carve graffiti with my Stanley. God is dead and anyhow the Devil is more manly. The architecture of a church is frankly rather fussy, But in I go, because the verger’s daughter is a hussy. We start with some communion wine (a boozer is our Tiffany), And after every evensong we have a fresh Epiphany.

For Competition 3414 you were invited to provide an extract from a well-known literary work rewritten to include appropriate product placements. Honourable mentions, in a top-notch entry, go to Max Ross, Ralph Goldswain, Hamish Wilson, John O’Byrne and Paula Cameron – and to Matt Quinn and Nick Syrett for a pair of excellent twists on Betjeman. The winners, printed below, are rewarded with £25 John Lewis vouchers. The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea In an opulent Ovington boat, They took some money and Rouse Runny Honey Wrapped up in a Burberry coat. The Owl looked up to the stars above And sang to a Gibson guitar, ‘O lovely Pussy, O Pussy, my love, You’re as sweet as a Fry’s chocolate bar.’ Pussy said to the Owl, ‘You elegant fowl!

For Competition 3409 you were invited to submit parental advice courtesy of famous writers. Kurt Vonnegut’s father’s advice to his son gave me the idea for this challenge: ‘Never take liquor into the bedroom. Don’t stick anything in your ears. Be anything but an architect.’ Your entries were witty and imaginative and there were many more potential winners than we have space for. Congratulations all round, and a special mention to George Simmers’s Georges Perec, Joe Houlihan’s Truman Capote, David Silverman’s Shakespeare and Max Ross’s Wordsworth. The following take the £25 John Lewis vouchers. We assume today that an adult’s duty is to keep children entertained. This assumption can only lead to disappointment in adulthood and a disinclination to grow up at all.

For Competition 3406 you were invited to cast a well-known fictional or non-fictional character, living or dead, in the role of agony aunt or uncle and provide a problem of your invention and their solution. There was very little to choose between an excellent crop. Unlucky losers include Bill Greenwell, Ralph Goldswain, Peter Smalley, Frank McDonald, Mark Ambrose, Bill Ries, Frank Upton and Brian Murdoch. The £25 John Lewis vouchers go to those entries printed below. Q: A near neighbour has a white van he insists on parking right outside my house, even though his own parking space usually stands unoccupied. At home most of the time and noticing its comings and infrequent goings, I ponder constantly how to resolve the situation amicably. A: Amicably be damned!

Competition 3403 invited you to provide an extract from a prequel to a well-known work of prose or poetry. It was a stellar haul this week, with prose and poetry represented equally. I was sorry not to have space for Ralph Goldswain’s ‘Eleventh Night’, Brian Murdoch’s The Lion, the Witch and the Trip to Ikea, George Simmers’s ‘On First Considering Looking into Chapman’s Homer’ or John O’Byrne’s The Pretrial. Also worthy of special mention are Sue Pickard, Alan Bradnam, Mike Morrison, D.A. Prince, Nick Syrett, Joe Houlihan, Sylvia Fairley, Martin Parker and the Revd Dr Peter Mullen. The £25 John Lewis vouchers go to those entries printed below.

Competition 3400 invited you to write poems to mark YouTube’s 20th birthday. This challenge drew a large, accomplished entry which was both amusing and informative. Alex Steelsmith’s double dactylic submission was a strong contender for a place in the winning line-up, as were Bill Greenwell, Mike Morrison, Frank McDonald, David Silverman, Elizabeth Kay and Janine Beacham. But the John Lewis vouchers are awarded to those poems printed below.

Competition 3399 called for a traditional bedtime story updated for the 21st century.We’re tight on space, so I’ll pause just to give a special mention to Ross Haggart before awarding the £25 vouchers to those below. ‘The sky is falling!’ cried Chicken-Licken. Ducky-Lucky, thinking this might be fake news, waddled off to do some fact-checking. But Henny-Penny had reliable information from Humpy-Trumpy and Q-Anonny on ticky-tocky that Crooked Hillary-Clillary, helped by five gee-gees all the way from China, was planning to bring down the sky, in order to distract from her other naughty conspiracies. Goosey-Loosey was very kind. She felt that Chicken-Licken needed help. ‘How are you really?’ she asked him a hundred times.

For Competition 3397 you were invited to recast the ‘Hokey-Cokey’ in the style of a poet of your choice. An appreciative nod to Tracy Davidson’s William McGonagall: ‘And the whole body should feel the vibration/ As your waggling appendage commits oscillation.’ High fives also go to David Blakey, Max Gutmann, J.S. White, Peter Smalley, Tom Adam, Bob Newman and Elizabeth Kay. The prizes go to those below. They fuck you up, these outs and ins,The more so if you’ve had a drinkAnd can’t tell low from upper limbsOr right from left; it’s hell, you’ll think.But then you’re told to shake aboutAnd lose such focus as you’d got,This dance is fun to watch, no doubt,But for participants it’s not. That’s what it’s all about, you’re told.

For Competition 3394 you were invited to submit a vernal triolet. In 1894, the poet Banjo Paterson wrote a heartfelt triolet in dispraise of the triolet and Brian Allgar did the same this week: I really hate the triolet, And, Spring or not, I find them hell. ‘Oh, tra-la-la, it’s cold and wet.’ I really hate the triolet. All those repeated lines that get Nowhere (just like the villanelle). I really hate the triolet, And, Spring or not, I find them hell. Nonetheless, you rose to the challenge with gusto, producing a funny and poignant entry that was hard to whittle down to a winning line-up. Hats off to unlucky losers Tom Adam, Martin Parker, Iain Morley, Jasmine Jones, Alan Bradnam, Dorothy Pope, Nick Syrett, Bob Newman, Anna Cox and Susan McLean.

For Competition 3391 you were invited to submit one of Keats’s odes rewritten as a sonnet or a limerick. Four out of the five odes composed by Keats in the spring of 1819 feature in the winning line-up, as does ‘To Autumn’, written in September of that year. Once again there were many more winners than we have space for. A consolatory pat on the back to unlucky losers Benedict King, Duncan Forbes, Gail White, John Redmond, Jennifer Zhou, Iain Morley, David Cram and Mark Brown. The winners below earn a £25 John Lewis voucher. It’s autumn, harvest-time, maturing sun, Cue mellow fruitfulness, soft mists and bees, Things ooze, swell, ripen, overflow and run, Plump, sweet and sticky, plopping off the trees.

For Competition 3388 you were invited to submit a poem written from the point of view of a prepper. While the topic of this challenge was a bit of a downer, the standard of your poems – inventive, sad and funny – was cheering. I was sorry not to be able to fit in Chris O’Carroll’s nod to the Beatles: ‘We’re the Ardent Preppers’ Chance Stockpile Band…’ and David Silverman’s twist on Masefield’s Cargoes: Wrinkle-cream of Nivea on discount offer: Packed, for life on sunny Exoplanet 59, With box sets of Homeland, Line of Duty, Game of Thrones and Last of the Summer Wine. There were near-misses, too, for Bill Greenwell and Nicholas Hodgson, but the £25 John Lewis vouchers go to those below.

Competition 3346 invited you to write an ‘Epitaph on a Tyrant’. There were fewer Putins than expected but both T Rex and Caligula cropped up more than once. It was a strong field and hard to whittle down but £25 goes to each of the following. Beast, twelve feet tall and forty long,Fast, clever and immensely strong,With eight-inch teeth and fearsome jaws,The ultimate in carnivores,He ruled the Mesozoic age,Exulting in his cruel rage.But something then occurred to bringThe mighty tyrant lizard kingDown to extinction from his throne;The cause of death is still unknown.Of theories there is quite a range:Disease, volcanoes, climate change,Or p’raps the earth could not avoidA rather deadly asteroid.His legacy’s not what he planned:Mistaken for a glam rock band.

In Competition No. 3345, you were invited to submit a report on a popular sporting event as it might have been written by someone who is not first and foremost a sportswriter. In a high-class field, David Silverman, the Revd Dr Peter Mullen and Ben Hale were unlucky to lose out on the £25 which goes to the winners below: It is the usual nightmare. I select a horse of those milling at the start of a steeplechase. I opt for the grey, committing immediately a humiliating crime against the form book Father scrupulously maintained. No steeple materialising from the winter gloom, I grow anxious how the race can be completed before it is commenced. The beasts set out at the wordless behest of a figure on a rostrum.

In Competition No. 3344 you were invited to submit a poem expressing feelings – positive or negative – about a poetic form. The standard was impressively high, with near-misses for Max Ross, Sylvia Fairley and David Silverman, whose entry ended by rendering Paradise Lost in a single haiku (‘Angel turns nasty/ Temptation in the garden/ A big mistake. Huge’). All below win a well-deserved £25. The way its rigid pattern goes, The triolet repeats a lot. A canny reader quickly knows The way its rigid pattern goes. It’s an enchanting form to those Whose memory’s completely shot. The way its rigid pattern goes, The triolet repeats. A lot. You get to hear this first line thrice. And this one is repeated, too. In triolets, that’s not a vice.

In Competition No. 3343 you were invited to submit a sermon on a subject of contemporary relevance in the style of a well-known writer. This challenge drew a medium-sized entry, mostly of great merit, pronouncing on subjects that ranged from the evils of mobile phones to deep fakes and potholes. Frank McDonald’s Alexander Pope – ‘Now when to mischief small men bend their will/ They soon decide the past is full of ill…’ – and Janine Beacham’s Geoffrey Willans were unlucky losers, but Chris O’Carroll’s preacher-poet John Donne leads the prizewinners below, who take £25 each. If a Tik or a Tok be washed away The entire ecosystem Of online intercourse would be the less As well as if an Apple were.

In Competition No. 3342 you were invited to submit a proposal of marriage in the style of a famous writer. The overall standard was high, and entries that impressed and amused include Bob Trewin’s Hemingway, Dorothy Pope’s Larkin and Nicholas Lee’s Conan Doyle. Janine Beacham’s Masefield’s also shone: I must go down on one knee again, if you’ll wed      me on the fly, And all I ask is an office do, with no friends or      family by… The most prizeworthy are printed below and earn £25 each. Because thou hast not nam’d the DaySuch Task doth fall – to MeAm I too late?

In Competition No. 3341 you were invited to submit a poem about a great work of art –  a challenge prompted by George Steiner’s observation that ‘the best readings of art are art’. The writer Geoff Dyer has cited W.H. Auden’s 1938 ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’ –  about Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus’ and our relationship to suffering – as an example of this: (‘About suffering they were never wrong,/ The old Masters: how well they understood/ Its human position…/ …how everything turns away/ Quite leisurely from the disaster…’).

In Competition No. 3340 you were asked to submit a poem calling for a particular food to be banned. It was Julie Bindel’s impassioned anti-balsamic vinegar piece that prompted me to invite you to share your culinary bêtes-noires (three of mine – Battenberg, tripe and Liquorice Allsorts – cropped up in the entry). Adrian Fry and Colin Brewer were thinking along the same lines with twists on Betjeman’s ‘Slough’; both earn commendations, as does Frank McDonald’s villanelle in dispraise of the lamb chop and Brian Murdoch’s anti-cucumber rap. The winners, led by Bill Greenwell (with echoes of Christopher Smart’s cat Jeoffry), earn £25. For I would outlaw the potato crisp.For there are only 22 crisps in a standard bag.For that is only about 10% of the space available.