Lucy Vickery

In Competition 2814 you were invited to describe how a great writer stumbled upon an idea that he or she later put to good use. Thanks to Messrs Allgar and Moore, Brians both, for suggesting that I challenge competitors to imagine the unlikely circumstances in which the seeds of great literary works were sown. I enjoyed Chris O’Carroll’s tale of the genesis of that famous stage direction ‘Exit pursued by a bear’ and John O’Byrne’s account of Samuel Beckett waiting with his mother for a bus that never comes. Stephen Walsh finds the origins of Hemingway’s spare, muscular prose in the classroom. The winners take £25 each. Lydia Shaxberd earns £30. Exhausted from his play, young Beckett slumped under the solitary tree.

In Competition 2813 you were invited to submit an application in verse, from the poet of your choice, for the position of poet laureate. There were robust bids from poets who were passed over for the laureateship on account of their questionable politics — Pope, for example, and Milton — as well as from those that made the grade: Betjeman, Hughes, Wordsworth and Nahum Tate all threw their hat in the ring. Other eloquent pleas came from McGonagall, who would surely have challenged Alfred Austin for the crown of worst rhymester, Ogden Nash and Dylan Thomas. Mae Scanlan, Gerard Benson, Mike Morrison, Sylvia Fairley and Paul Evans were unlucky losers. The winners take £30 each. Alanna Blake earns £35.

In Competition No. 2812 you were invited to provide a poem celebrating bookshops. Space is tight, which leaves room only for a congratulatory slap on the back all-round but especially to unlucky losers Max Ross, who submitted a clever acrostic, Gerard Benson, James Leslie-Melville, Lydia Shaxberd, Alison Zucker and Annette Field. The prizewinners below earn £25 each. W.J. Webster takes the bonus fiver. Let’s all now give a big and grateful hand To firms whose livelihood is print, retail: Each member of this much beleaguered band Plays its own part in keeping books for sale. Not always loved, the large emporial stores (Where volumes are the measure of their trade), Show how the house of books has many floors And bears an aura that we can’t let fade.

In Competition 2810 you were invited to write a light-hearted poem about a serious subject. I suggested you take a look at J.B.S. Haldane’s comic poem ‘Cancer is a funny thing’ to get an idea of what I was after. Another source of inspiration might have been my predecessor Jaspistos, the poet James Michie, who treated the big subjects — life, illness, death — with an exquisitely deft, witty touch. Here is ‘Cancer, or the Biter Bit’,  written shortly before he died: ‘I used to fancy crabmeat as a treat:/ Now Crab’s the epicure, and I’m the meat.’ It was a large entry but the standard was on the patchy side. Still, some excelled.

In Competition 2809 you were invited to submit a letter liberally sprinkled with evidence of an imperfect grasp of foreign languages. In his 1946 essay ‘Politics and the English Language’ George Orwell took a pop at the self-conscious use of foreign words and expressions: ‘Cul de sac, ancien régime, deus ex machina, mutatis mutandis, status quo, Gleichschaltung, Weltanschauung, are used to give an air of culture and elegance ... Bad writers ... are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones...’ They may be annoying and pretentious, but the would-be cosmopolitan sophisticates that Orwell rails against provide rich comic potential, which you mined with panache.

In Competition 2808 you were invited to invent a new addition to the genre that already includes Tartan Noir and Nordic Noir. This was another invitation to leap aboard the latest literary bandwagon. The new noirs stretched from Devon to space via Middle Earth and Antarctica. You didn’t allow yourselves to be pinned down by geography, though. Basil Ransome-Davies is the proud progenitor of Expat Noir and pockets £30, while the rest of the winners earn £25.   Commissaire Lemaître studied the transcripts, baffled and despondent. With all their blogging and emailing the English seemed obsessed by mundane grouches, and for ever in need of advice or consolation. Requests for good yoga classes and hairdressers. Complaints of French inefficiency and greed.

In Competition 2807 you were invited to submit a hatchet job by a well-known author of your choice on a book or poem by another well-known writer. This challenge was inspired by the Omnivore’s magnificent Hatchet Job of the Year award, which it describes as ‘a crusade against dullness, deference and lazy thinking’. In 1865 the award might well have gone to Henry James for his brutal review of Our Mutual Friend for the Nation magazine. ‘Our Mutual Friend is ...the poorest of Mr Dickens’s works. And it is poor with the poverty not of momentary embarrassment but of permanent exhaustion.’    You were at your caustic best this week. Commendations go to D.A. Prince and Carl Tanner and the winners take £25 each. G.M.

In Competition 2805 you were invited to submit toe-curlingly bad analogies. Congratulations! You obliged with a stream of analogies glorious in their overwrought, tasteless, laboured awfulness. The first five competitors printed below get £15 each. Basil Ransome-Davies and Adrian Fry take £10 and the remaining half-dozen pocket a fiver each.   Her kisses were like wine: not plonk, either (though equally not the kind of austere vintage that stands aloof from all but connoisseurs) — more like a respectable yet reasonably priced Cabernet-Shiraz blend that would definitely have you coming back for another glug.