Lucy Vickery

In Competition 2832 you were invited to compose what might be a quintessential opening paragraph from the pen of either Graham Greene, Frank Kafka, Jane Austen or Tolkien. It was a tall order to channel such literary genius, but on the whole you did it pretty well. Greene, with his immediately distinctive voice, was by far the most popular choice. As Nicholas Shakespeare wrote, ‘It rarely takes more than three ...sentences to situate you in Greeneland, a place whose moral temperature would wring sweat out of a fridge.’ Kafka proved the most difficult nut to crack. None of you quite managed to capture his finely calibrated blend of the nightmarish and the mundane, though Bill Greenwell came closest, and Josh Ekroy nailed well his exhaustive sentence structures.

In Competition 2830 you were invited to choose, from different authors, two characters who have the same job or position and give an excerpt of not more than 150 words from their conversation on meeting. The assignment brought forth an entertaining cast of literary pairings, with gentlemen’s gentlemen, sleuths, teachers and doctors featuring most strongly, but not forgetting, too, a sprinkling of sailors, spies, nannies and ladies of the night. Honourable mentions to Frank McDonald, Brian Murdoch, D.A. Prince and Sylvia Fairley. The bonus fiver is Chris O’Carroll’s and the rest take £30 each. ‘Welcome, Silver. Allow me to offer you a glass of wine.’ ‘Swab the deck with your blasted wine, Hook. Avast your Etonian airs. Rum or nothing for me.

In Competition 2829 you were invited to imagine what Philip Larkin might have made of the news that Hull has been anointed 2017’s City of Culture. Despite its unpromising image, this city-of-culture-in-waiting has nurtured a wide range of creative talents: from poets such as Andrew Marvell and Stevie Smith, to the actor Tom Courtenay, the film director Anthony Minghella and folk legends the Watersons. And of course Larkin himself, who sought refuge in the university library from celebrity and the metropolitan literati. Most of you had the poet conform to his self-perpetuated image of right-wing curmudgeon, but there was a glimpse here and there of a softer side too; that quiet voice of celebration that sits alongside the familiar detached world-weariness.

In Competition 2828 you were invited to submit a retrospective verse commentary on 2013. Reasons to be cheerful are, apparently, somewhat thin on the ground. Alanna Blake’s opening couplet captures the general mood of the entry: The year is past, it’s maybe best To let the poor thing lie at rest. The arrival of a royal baby injected a more positive note, albeit leavened by a healthy dash of cynicism. Here’s Jerome Betts: Yet still, you welcomed young Prince George, A howling future Head of State, Then let the media-vultures gorge On shots of —Wow! — unweighty Kate Commendations to Trish Davis and Chris O’Carroll, who were unlucky losers. The winners take £25 each and the bonus fiver belongs to Alan Millard. Happy New Year!

In Competition 2827 you were invited to submit a Christmas list, in verse, in the style of the poet of your choice.   This challenge called on you not only to pull off a convincing pastiche of a particular poet but also to come up with a plausible Christmas wish list for them.   There were neat references to Dorothy Parker’s ‘One Perfect Rose’ from Noel Petty and Martin Parker, and I liked Basil Ransome-Davies’s riff on MacNeice’s ‘Bagpipe Music’.

In Competition 2826 you were invited to submit nonsense verse on a wintry theme. The line between sense and nonsense is a blurred one; certainly Carroll’s crazy world has a bonkers internal logic all of its own. But perhaps the best way into nonsense is to put the quest for sense aside for once and simply surrender yourself to the whimsical, the topsy-turvy and the fantastical. The winners below take £25 each. The bonus fiver is Brian Allgar’s. ’Twas winter, and the gringeing goves Did quave and quemble on the ice, The cameroon howled like a loon And nibbled frozen lice.   ‘The miliband is close at hand!’ He sneezed with fear and snarled with pain. ‘A thousand legs like stumpy pegs, Yet only half a brain!

In Competition 2825 you were invited to supply a poem for a well-known painting of your choice. The poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti was the inspiration behind this challenge. His sonnet ‘Found’ was written in 1881 as a companion to an unfinished oil painting of the same title on the theme of prostitution, which is now in the Delaware Museum. Rossetti’s Pre-Raphaelite brethren featured strongly in the entry. Melanie Branton’s companion piece to ‘Ophelia’, a lament from a long-suffering Lizzie Siddal, made me smile. Rob Stuart, Sylvia Fairley, Adrian Fry, Philip Wilson and Chris O’Carroll were also strong contenders but narrowly missed joining the prizewinners below, who take £25 each. The bonus fiver is Alan Millard’s.

In Competition 2824 you were invited to submit double clerihews about a well-known sporting figure past or present.   The clerihew was invented by Edmund  Clerihew Bentley as a bored schoolboy. His  son Nicolas subsequently came up with the double clerihew and trebles have been recorded. Other noted practitioners include Chesterton and Auden — and, of course, James Michie, who contributed many stellar examples to this magazine.   The rules governing the form are not iron-clad, as I see it. After all, Bentley himself bent them from time to time, as in this example. The art of Biography Is different from Geography. Geography is about maps, But Biography is about chaps. The winners below earn £15 for each entry printed.

In Competition 2823 you were invited to submit a school essay or poem written at the age of eight by a well-known person, living or dead, entitled ‘My Pet’ . Those of you who chose to step into the childhood shoes of well-known writers faced the tricky challenge of pulling off an element of pastiche while at the same time producing something that could plausibly have been written by an eight-year-old. Emily Dickinson, a famously precocious child, was a popular choice. Gordon Gwilliams’s entry revealed the stirrings of educational-reformist zeal in the young Michael Gove, while Richard Hayes’s brought to life Russell Brand, budding Narcissus. I also liked Susan McLean’s already-jaundiced Boy Larkin. The winners take £25 each.

In Competition 2822 you were invited to submit an extract from a scene from a contemporary soap opera (television or radio) as Shakespeare might have written it. The idea of filtering an aspect of popular culture through the lens of the Bard for comic effect is not a new one, of course. A recent example comes in the shape of a George Lucas-Shakespeare mash-up from Ian Doescher, who recasts the Star Wars saga as a five-act play in iambic pentameter: ‘In time so long ago begins our play / In star-crossed galaxy far, far away.’ In a closely contested field, Paul Goring, Anne Woolfe, Caroline Macafee, G. Tapper- and George Simmers (‘Tomorrow and tomo-rrow and tomorrow,/ Creep on these petty tales from day to day) impressed. The prizewinners pocket £30 each.