Lucy Vickery

In Competition No. 2936 you were invited to propose lyrics for a new British national anthem. Tom Shakespeare recently suggested that now might be a good time to ditch ‘God Save the Queen’ — ‘terrible tune, with banal lyrics’ — and replace it with something that more accurately reflects contemporary Britain. My favourite, in an entry whose tone varied wildly, was Bill Greenwell’s jaunty reimagining of ‘Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick’ by the late, great Ian Dury, which is refreshingly lacking in jaundice, sentimentality or jingoism. He takes £35. The rest earn £30.

In Competition No. 2935 you were invited to submit a Valentine’s triolet. A famous example of the triolet is Frances Cornford’s catty ‘To a Fat Lady seen from the Train’ (‘O fat white woman whom nobody loves/ Why do you walk through the field in gloves’), but it was that ace trioleteer Wendy Cope’s rather more charming ‘Valentine’ that prompted me to invite you to take on this medieval form. It was a varied, funny and accomplished entry: you rose admirably to the challenge of breathing life into your poems despite the formal straitjacket. The winners below take £15 each.   You weren’t the one I would have picked if it had been just down to me. My friend insisted, so I ticked.

In Competition No. 2934 you were invited to submit a poem suitable for inclusion in Now We are Rich. You weren’t obliged to write in the style of A.A. Milne, but most of you did. Long lines mean that there is space for only five winners this week; D.A. Prince, Warren Clements, Max Gutmann, Martin Parker and George Simmers were unlucky to be squeezed out. Those that made the cut are printed below and take £30 apiece. Bill Greenwell’s ‘Binker’-inspired entry earns him the extra fiver.   The Donald — as I call him — is a secret I can’t share The Donald is the reason why I have such golden hair Making market killings, stealing from the poor Whatever cut I’m taking, the Donald tells me, ‘More!

In Competition No. 2933 you were invited to submit a blurb for a misery memoir. Thanks to Tom Dulake for suggesting this excellent challenge. The winners would be worthy occupants of what some bookshops call the ‘Painful Lives’ section, which service the reading public’s appetite for ever more harrowing accounts of extreme suffering. Unsure whether to congratulate or commiserate with the miserabilists below, I award the bonus fiver to W.J.Webster; the rest take £25 each. Slow Drags the Harrow is Len Sprague’s fearless account of a life survived through sheer unyielding endurance. When he was seven his mother was convicted of poisoning his brutally sadistic father.

In Competition No. 2932 you were invited to submit up to 16 lines of verse that are the fruit of a collaboration between two poets. This week’s brief was open to interpretation. Some of you submitted centos (poems comprised of lines from existing poems); others imagined a pair of poets co-writing a new work incorporating the styles and/or themes of both and elements of existing poems. Some match-made poets with similar preoccupations; others saw the attraction in opposites. It was a clever and engaging entry and narrowing it down to just six was a protracted and painful process. The following would have been worthy winners had there only been more space: W.J. Webster, Katie Mallett, David Silverman, Alanna Blake, G.M. Southgate, Martin John, G.M.

In Competition No. 2931 you were invited to submit a psychiatric report on a well-known figure in literature. Shakespearean characters featured strongly in the entry, but it was children’s books that provided the most fertile hunting ground. Pretty much all of the inhabitants of Hundred Acre Wood — and of Wonderland — found themselves on the shrink’s couch, as did Mr Toad (bipolar); William Brown (ADHD; gender/body dysmorphia); and Rupert Bear (Asperger’s). Honourable mentions go to Amanda Nicholson, Julia Pickles, Alan Millard and Alanna Blake, but D.A. Prince is star performer this week and is rewarded with the bonus fiver. Her fellow winners earn £30.

In Competition No. 2930 you were invited to submit up to 16 lines of macaronic verse. A dictionary of poetic terms will tell you that macaronic is a verse form popularised by Teofilo Folengo, a Mantuan monk, which uses a mixture of languages, normally with a comic or satirical intent. I prefer E.O. Parrott’s elegant definition: ‘a school of poetry which originated in the polyglot eating houses of Trieste’. French was the most popular second language; Latin and German followed closely behind. Polish, Greek, Russian and Swahili also made fleeting appearances (hallelujah for Google Translate). It was a smallish field but there was much to admire. Frederick Robinson, Frank Upton, Jerome Betts, Frank -McDonald and Bill Greenwell all deserve a round of applause.

In Competition No. 2929 you were invited to submit an acrostic poem containing some predictions for the next decade, in which the first letters of the lines read NOSTRADAMUS. Although the forecast was bleak — no surprise there — a welcome smattering of more left-field prophecies made me sit up and take notice: Richard Dawkins finds God; A and Z amicably switch; Durham’s new bishop wins Miss UK; the Chilcot report is met with universal approval. Commiserations to near-winners Sam Gwynn, G.M. Southgate, Brian Allgar, Katie Mallett and Alan Millard. Those that just beat them to it are printed below and earn £15 each; the bonus fiver belongs to Bill Greenwell. Neuter genders are declared at birth; Oceans empty, seasides are extended;   Skinny’s out.

In Competition No. 2927 you were invited to submit a Christmas carol written in the style of a writer of your choice. Albert Black’s ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ by way of Will Self raised a seasonal smile: ‘Erstwhile in posh Dave’s municipality/ Upraised a plebeian bovid shack…’ As did George Simmers, who imagined Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Christmas Howl’: ‘Ommm … I have seen ecstatic visions of Noddy Holder, and of King Wenceslas riding naked upon a reindeer…’ The winners take £35 and Sylvia Fairley nabs the festive fiver. Merry Christmas, and thank you, veterans and newcomers alike, for all your inventive, witty and well-made entries. Keep ’em coming.

In Competition No. 2926 you were invited to submit a poem about HS2. The idea for this challenge came to me as I was listening on YouTube to W.H. Auden’s poem ‘Night Mail’, which he wrote to accompany a section of the terrific 1936 documentary about the London to Glasgow Postal Special directed by Basil Wright and Harry Watt (who described Auden as looking like a ‘half-witted Swedish deckhand’). Not altogether surprisingly, the tone of the entry was less celebratory than Auden’s, with the notable exception of Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead’s prize-winning submission, written in MacGonagallese. Her fellow victors are rewarded with £30 apiece and George Simmers snaffles the extra fiver.