Lucy Vickery

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.

In Competition No. 3339 you were invited to submit a crime story in sonnet form. Poems that have the suggestion of a criminal act at their heart – Robert Browning’s ‘My Last Duchess’, for example – were at the back of my mind when I set this challenge, and it attracted a terrific crop of entries. Hugh King’s Cluedo-inspired offering and Bill Greenwell’s Perry Mason-themed sonnet, which had echoes of Scooby-Doo (‘It was the janitor!), were unlucky to miss out on a prize, as were Bo Crowder, C. Paul Evans and Iain Morley. Those who did make the cut nab £20 and are printed below. ’Twas such a deed as no man ever did, Though after me it would become the norm. To kill a human like a calf or kid – I was transgression in a brave new form.

In Competition No. 3338 you were invited to submit an essay on the topic of evolution in the style of the writer of your choice. In a top-notch entry, Basil Ransome-Davies’s twist on Larkin’s ‘Annus Mirabilis’, Janine Beacham’s Edgar Allan Poe and Russell Chamberlain’s imagining of Kipling’s final Just So story, How Every Creature Got All Its Characteristics, earn honourable mentions: I have pondered in times numerous, as via fossils, skull to humerus,how our ancestors developed through six million years or more –and agreed with the solution, as per Darwin, evolution;thus, the change from apelike primates to bipedal I’ll explore.’Tis a tale of Homo sapiens, and all that came before – ages past the dinosaur. As does Nicholas Stone’s W.S.

In Competition No. 3337 you were invited to submit a soliloquy composed by Giovanni Fontana’s marble statue of Shakespeare, which has graced Leicester Square since 1874. Bill Greenwell, Alan Millard, Sylvia Fairley and Paul A. Freeman were star performers, but a standing ovation and £20 go to the winners below. Here stand I, with Lord Leicester’s patronage, Four-square, and can survey from every side, The life of London, multiplied and squared, Watching the things that change, yet do not change.

In Competition No. 3336 you were invited to supply the story behind the composition of a famous poem. This challenge drew a smart and diverse entry that proved tricky to whittle down to a prizewinning half-dozen. But after lengthy consideration, D.A. Prince, Brian Murdoch and Paul Voogt are awarded commendations and those printed below earn their authors £25 each. Dear Marlowe, so, you want to write poems to impress the London girls. Well, sonnets are still hot with the nobility, but let me tell you, Kit, rural idylls are all the rage! Think cheeping birds, pastoral imagery, sexy allusions to hills and valleys. Passionate, liberal shepherds go down a treat. The ladies go mad for tanned, strapping country swains and romps in the hay.

In Competition No. 3335 you were invited to submit an acrostic poem for Valentine’s Day whose acrostic contains an unValentine-ish sentiment. The prize winners, printed below, pocket £20 apiece.

In Competition No. 3334 you were invited to submit a poem about conspiracy theories. Trawling the net for examples, I found, alongside the more familiar ones – a reptilian elite, JFK’s assassination, commie fluoridation – whispers of chemicals in the water to turn the frogs gay and that Finland is a myth. In a hotly contested week, Adrian Fry, Sylvia Smith, Janine Beacham, Nicholas Lee and Nick MacKinnon earn honourable mentions while the prizewinners, printed below, snaffle £25 apiece. Our WhatsApp know what’s what. We knowthe council’s spying on our binswith microchip-type spyware, sothey know who puts out unwashed tins.

In Competition No. 3333 you were invited to submit a short story that features Donald Trump or another politician of your choice in a well-known fictional landscape. Joan Didion once observed that Ronald Reagan was the American politician to most fully embrace his own fictionality, making up stories in which he played the starring role. Didion put this down to ‘his tendency to see the presidency as a script waiting to be solved’. Needless to say, Reagan didn’t play a starring role in the entry; a medium-sized but impressive postbag was dominated by Donald Trump and Nigel Farage. Competitors who shone included Sue Pickard, Nicholas Hodgson and Nigel Bennetton. The prize winners, printed below, earn £30.

In Competition No. 3332 you were invited to supply, in verse form, a retraction of beliefs previously believed in passionately. You weren’t obliged to step into the shoes of a real poet but many chose to and some smart, entertaining about-turns included Robert Schechter’s ‘Palinode on a Grecian Urn’: ‘Truth is beauty,’I said smugly,but lived to findthat truth is ugly. Other standout performers included Janine Beacham, George Simmers and Alex Steelsmith, and they were unlucky to miss out on a place in the winners’ enclosure. Those entries that made the final cut are printed below and earn their authors £25. The world is charged with grandeur we applaud,The sheen and perfume of its sky, sea, soil.To all that drones is nature’s spree the foil.