Lucy Vickery

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.

In Competition No. 2870 you were invited to submit an autumn villanelle. Stephen Fry likes villanelles. The form inspired him to write his book The Ode Less Travelled (subtitled Unlocking the poet within). I like them too — and so do you, if the size of the entry is anything to go by. A round of applause for the winners below, who take £30 each.   Autumn has come and summer dreams are dead And though she compensates with golden trees Beyond her kind deceit death lies ahead.   She wears a smile and moves with gentle tread And yet her tone will change as time decrees; Autumn has come and summer dreams are dead.   Too soon her transient beauty will be shed And withered blooms will disappoint her bees. Beyond her kind deceit death lies ahead.

In Competition No. 2869 you were invited to submit a poem on any theme as it might have been written by the diminutive, myopic warden of New College, Oxford Revd W.A. Spooner, whose gift for mangling words bequeathed us such comic gems as ‘The Lord is a shoving leopard’. Not everyone was laughing, though. ‘Am I the only one who finds this exercise extraordinarily difficult?’ wailed Brian Murdoch. He’s got a point. Judging the entries was a brain-addling process, so goodness knows what torture it must have been to write them. The winners take a well deserved £25 each. Sylvia Fairley snaffles £30.   Send my abandoned tart to hell In flames, my fuel crate; The witch I’m bedding sent a note, A catalogue of hate.

In Competition No. 2868 you were invited to take something mundane and filter it through the lens of magic realism. I have been meaning to set this comp since the death of Gabriel Garcia Marquez earlier this year. Master of the fantastical, Marquez conjures a world in which the arrival of one character is heralded by a swarm of yellow butterflies, the death of another by a light rain of yellow flowers. The entry was peppered with echoes of One Hundred Years of Solitude, but there were traces of Bulgakov too. Frank Upton wins £30. The rest take £25. ‘Thank you for calling Megacorp. Your call is as unimportant to us as every human action and may be recorded for purposes that are unclear. All our operators have identical names right now.

In Competition No. 2867 you were invited to add a final stanza to a well-known poem. Nicholas Stone imagined how Coleridge might have continued had it not been for the intrusion of the Person of Porlock. Tracy Davidson’s coda to ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ painted a picture of interspecies conjugal bliss turned sour. And Penn Harvey added a final instalment to Wallace Stevens’s chilly modernist masterpiece ‘The Emperor of Ice-Cream’. There were strong performances all round this week and it was difficult to whittle down the entry. Bill Greenwell, Katie Mallett, Alanna Blake, Mike Morrison and Brian Murdoch were pipped to the post, but only just, by the prizewinners below, who are rewarded with £15 each. Chris O’Carroll takes the bonus fiver.

In Competition No. 2866 you were invited to pick a well-known poem and write a short story with the same title using the poem’s opening and closing lines to begin and end the piece. I liked Mike Morrison’s use of the first line of Eliot’s ‘Whispers of Immortality’ as a springboard into an intriguing snapshot of the lexicographer Noah Webster. Equally impressive was Josh Ekroy’s imagining of an alternative and far from uneventful life for Mr Bleaney, who is reincarnated as a ruthless terrorist. Other star performers were Max Ross, Sid Field, John O’Byrne and Ashani Lewis. The winners earn £25 each. G.M. Davis takes £30. ‘My old flame, my wife!

In Competition No. 2865 you were invited to compose a poet’s elegy for him or herself. This challenge took you down a path trod by poor Chidiock Tichborne, who wrote his own elegy, ‘Tichborne’s Elegy’, in 1586, on the night before his execution, aged 28, for his part in a conspiracy against Elizabeth I. You were all good this week. Commiserations to Peter Smalley, Barbara Smoker, Max Ross, Sylvia Fairley and Chris Gleed, who narrowly missed the cut. The winners earn £25 each. Brian Allgar trousers £30. I’faith, I cannot say which is the worse: To fade into oblivion, forgot, Or for my shade to live on through my verse And mock me that it is, when I am not.

In Competition No. 2864 you were invited to submit an imaginary feature from a newspaper’s health pages extolling the benefits to wellbeing of something traditionally thought to be bad for you. Brian Murdoch cast a new light on excessive boozing: ‘The Romans knew about it, of course, and new guidelines have re-endorsed the values of binge drinking as a regular purgation of the system.’ And if you have always viewed the deep-fried Mars Bar with suspicion, think again: Rob Stuart’s entry argues (not altogether convincingly) that, far from being ‘nutritional Armageddon’, the DFMB actually provides us with the requisite five-a-day.