Lucy Vickery

In Competition No. 2881 you were invited to do as Carol Ann Duffy has done and provide an amusing poem about a piece of government legislation. The first line of her poem ‘22 Reasons for the Bedroom Tax’, ‘Because the badgers are moving the goalposts’, is, of course, a reference to environment secretary Owen Paterson’s unfortunate attempt to explain the government’s failure to reach cull targets. Adrian Fry was entertaining on the Chancel Repair Bill. Commendations, too, to Mike Morrison, Virginia Price Evans, Max Ross and John Whitworth. Alan Millard takes the bonus fiver. The rest get £25 each.

In Competition No. 2880 you were invited to provide a publicity blurb for the Bible to sell it to a modern audience. Kieran Corcoran presents Jesus as a social media sensation — ‘He used to have 12 followers but now he has TWO -BILLION!’ — and Derek Morgan pitches the Good Book as the go-to self-help manual: ‘Going to a garden party and nothing to wear? Trouble finding accommodation at peak season in a small town in the sticks? A house on a flood plain and weather forecast looks bad?’ Other strong performers in an uneven field were John O’Byrne, Sylvia Fairley and Josh Ekroy. The prizewinners, printed below, earn £30. The bonus fiver belongs to Pamela Dow. ‘His name’s Christ. Jesus Christ.

In Competition No. 2879 you were invited to follow in the footsteps of Hilary Mantel and provide a scene that shows a well-known villain from history or literature in an uncharacteristically kindly light. Mantel has said that she was driven by a ‘powerful curiosity’ rather than by any desire to rehabilitate Cromwell. ‘I do not run a Priory clinic for the dead,’ she wrote, which is a nice way of putting it. You plundered Dickens for baddies in need of a makeover — Fagin made repeated appearances alongside Daniel Quilp and Josiah Bounderby. Judas Iscariot and Dr Crippen were also popular choices. The standard was on the patchy side, but honourable mentions go to Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead, G.M. Davis, Barry Baldwin and Imke Thormählen. D.A.

In Competition No. 2878 you were invited to submit a poem composed of three haikus that looks forward to the year ahead. The traditional Japanese haiku contains 17 syllables in three unrhymed lines of five, seven and five syllables (though these rules are not always observed by western poets). It is neatly summed up here by Stanley J. Sharpless:   This is a haiku. Five syllables, then seven. Then five more. Got it?   The winners take £17 each. Hats off to Max Ross for injecting a sliver of optimism into the almost all-encompassing gloom of the winning line-up. Happy New Year.   Ukip wins more seats. Nation takes to drinking beer And falling asleep.   Britain becomes known As Europe’s sleeping partner. New PM fights back.

In Competition No. 2877 you were invited to submit a Christmas round robin as it might have been written by a well-known fictional character. Most of the entries were bursting with forced jocularity, but Basil Ransome-Davies, with an unusually frank Jeeves, neatly subverts the round-robin tradition of presenting a relentlessly positive face to the world. Meanwhile, John Samson’s Phileas Fogg takes holiday bragging to a whole new level, thereby earning the festive fiver. His fellow winners take £25. Happy Christmas, one and all!   Where have all the days gone? I know where 80 went! But lost count of number of ships, trains and wind-powered sledges(!) I’ve taken this year. Fabulous world tour. All in less than three months. A record? You bet!

In Competition No. 2876 you were invited to submit an example of an ill-advised foray by a poet laureate, past or present, into rap. Andrew Motion’s ‘rap’, written to mark Prince William’s 21st birthday, featured in a Telegraph piece by Charlotte Runcie on the worst poems by great writers and elicited such withering comments on the BBC website as, ‘Is that rap with a silent “c”, then?’ and ‘It’s my Dad saying “hey, cool man!” over and over again.’ Bill Greenwell’s rapping John Betjeman takes the extra fiver this week. Betjeman has form. On his delightful 1974 album Banana Blush he read his poetry against a backdrop of music by Jim Parker.

In Competition No. 2875 you were invited to submit a poem about an unlikely aphrodisiac. Thanks are due to that legend of the comping world Stanley J. Sharpless, whose ‘In Praise of Cocoa — Cupid’s Nightcap’ gave me the idea for this challenge. How confessional your entries were, who can say, but I liked Adrienne Parker’s account of an erotic encounter with a washing machine. The winners take £25 each. The bonus fiver belongs to John Whitworth, who points out that, unlikely as it might seem, we have it on Shakespeare’s authority that the potato is an aphrodisiac.   Casanova loves potato. Chips are what he gives his chick. Though she be as chaste as Plato Sizzling chips will do the trick.

In Competition No. 2874 you were invited to submit a scene written by a well-known children’s author of the past in which a character grapples with a 21st-century problem. Pamela Dow reimagines Louisa May Alcott’s girls posting selfies and practising mindfulness, while Harriet Elvin’s Eeyore longs for someone to invent antisocial media and Adrian Fry provides a thoroughly 21st-century exchange between William and Violet-Elizabeth Bott: ‘“William thexted me. And I thexted him. We’re going to thext and thext until we’re…” “Thick.” William concluded, self-pityingly.’ Commendations to Paul Wheeler for his portrait of Paddington Bear falling foul of immigration and to Josh Ekroy. The bonus fiver goes to G.M.

In Competition No. 2873 you were invited to submit a poem in praise or dispraise of a well-known building. It was a strong entry this week and Alanna Blake, Philip Roe, Basil Ransome-Davies and W.J. Webster were unlucky losers. Frank McDonald took me at my word and submitted an actual concrete poem, which made it into the winning line-up. His fellow victors take £25 each and this week’s bonus fiver goes to Brian Allgar for a double dactyl that would have pleased Guy de Maupassant. Maupassant hated the Eiffel Tower — ‘this tall, skinny pyramid of iron ladders, this giant and disgraceful skeleton’ — so much that he often sought refuge from it by eating lunch in its restaurant, the only place he couldn’t see it from.

In Competition No. 2872 you were invited to submit an author’s acknowledgments page that contains subtle indications that no thanks at all are due to those mentioned. E.E. Cummings does the anti-dedication in style in his 1935 volume No Thanks, which he self-published with financial help from his mother. Its dedication page contains a concrete poem printed in the shape of a funeral urn that opens with the words ‘NO THANKS TO...’ and goes on to list the names of the 14 publishing houses who had turned the collection down. This comp called for an altogether more softly-softly approach, with any ill will on the part of the author to be cunningly concealed beneath a veneer of gratitude. Christopher L.

In Competition No. 2871 you were invited to submit a dialogue in verse between man and God. The tone of the discourse was far from cordial, ranging from boredom and -disinterest to outright hostility. Here’s Alanna Blake’s disgruntled deity: ‘I’m old and growing deaf and very tired/ These are my final words: I have retired.’ Loss of faith, it seems, works both ways. Honourable mentions go to Peter Goulding and Emma Mascarenhas. The winners below earn £25 each. W.J. Webster gets £30. Forgive me, God, but might I know What on Earth you do these days? If you’re at work it doesn’t show Even in mysterious ways.