Literary competition

Competition: Tell us what you’d call a group of bankers

Spectator literary competition No. 2836 This week you are invited to come up with suitable collective nouns for the following: tweeters; hackers; hoodies; WAGs; environmentalists; bankers; MPs; contrarians. Entries to be emailed, please, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 19 February. The recent call for extracts from the adolescent diary of a well-known public figure, living or dead, pulled in the punters. The overall standard was impressive and it tough boiling the entry down to just six. Those who were narrowly squeezed out include Pervez Rizvi, P.C. Parrish, Mark Shelton and John Whitworth — and I liked Ralph Rochester’s Baden-Powell doing battle with his raging libido. The winners below take £25

Spectator competition: write a dating advert for an MP

Valentine’s Day is looming and love is in the air. So our competition this week is a profile for an online dating website for a well-known politician, living or dead. Please leave entries (of up to 150 words) in the comments, below, or email to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 12 February. Last week, you were invited to compose an address to an item of food –  inspired by Burns’s ‘Address to a Haggis’, that ‘Great chieftain o the puddin’-race’, but you were not obliged to write in his style. Albert Black went for a Kipling-Burns mash-up and other competitors drew on Shelley and Shakespeare. Jim Hayes, Martin Parker, Mae Scanlan,

Competition: Children’s classics hard-boiled

Spectator literary competition No. 2834 This week it’s Enid Blyton meets Dashiell Hammett. You are invited to submit an extract from a classic of children literature of your choice rewritten in the style of hard-boiled crime fiction. Entries of up to 150 words should be emailed to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 5 February. The most recent challenge, to compose what might be a quintessential opening paragraph from the pen of either Graham Greene, Frank Kafka, Jane Austen or Tolkien, attracted an entry of modest size. 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,

Competition: Dear Diary…

Spectator literary competition No. 2833 This week’s task is a fashionably confessional one. We live in an age of emotional incontinence, where spilling the beans to as many people as possible seems to be all the rage, so let’s have an extract from the teenage diary of a well-known public figure, living or dead. Please email entries of up to 150 words to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 29 January. The most recent competition 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. The standard was high,

Competition: Burns Night address

Spectator literary competition No. 2832 This week’s assignment is a nod to Robert Burns and his magnificent ‘Address to the Haggis’, which begins: Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o’ the pudding-race! Aboon them a’ yet tak your place, Painch, tripe, or thairm: Weel are ye wordy o’a grace As lang’s my arm. Your task is to compose an address to an item of food of your choice. It is up to you whether or not you write in the style of Burns but poems should be maximum 16 lines and entries emailed to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 22 January. The recent challenge to imagine what Philip Larkin

Competition: Larkin’s take on Hull as City of Culture

Spectator literary competition No. 2829 Peter Porter called Hull ‘the most poetic city in England’ but would Philip Larkin have agreed? What would he have made of his adopted home city being named 2017’s City of Culture? Answers, please, in verse of up to 16 lines, to be emailed to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 1 January. The recent invitation to confound logic and expectation, and submit nonsense verse on a wintry theme was taken up with gusto, producing a large and lively entry. Honourable mentions to Alanna Blake, Sylvia Fairley, Martin Elster and G.M. Davis, who were unlucky losers. The winners below pocket £25 each. The bonus fiver belongs to

Competition: That was the year that was

Spectator literary competition No. 2828 As the New Year hurtles towards us, it’s time for a retrospective commentary, in verse, on 2013. Please email entries of up to 16 lines to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 9 December (the shorter deadline is because of our seasonal production schedule). The recent competition to supply a poem for a well-known painting was inspired by the poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who composed a sonnet, ‘Found’, 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. You weren’t obliged to write a sonnet (a few did). Rossetti’s

Competition: write a letter to Santa in the style of the poet of your choice

Spectator literary competition No. 2827  It’s time for a seasonal challenge: let’s have a Christmas list, in verse, written in the style of the poet of your choice. Entries of up to 16 lines should be emailed to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 2 December. The recent assignment in which competitors were asked to supply double clerihews about well-known sporting figures, past or present, was a popular one and drew a large and lively entry. The clerihew form was invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley, who composed his first in 1890, aged 16, as a pupil at St Paul’s. His son Nicolas came up with the double clerihew and trebles have been

Spectator competition: compose some wintry nonsense

Our competition this week invites you to submit nonsense verse on a wintry theme. The line between sense and nonsense is a blurred one. In his Spectator review of Geoffrey Grigson’s Faber anthology of nonsense verse, Anthony Burgess encapsulated this nicely, noting that Mr Grigson ‘wisely evades, in his preface, anything like a definition of nonsense. He knows that we will only know what nonsense is when we know the nature of sense. Nonsense is something we think we can recognise, just as we think we can recognise poetry, but there has to be an overlap with what we think we can recognise as sense.’ A good way to get yourself in

Spectator competition: compose a sporting clerihew

Spectator literary competition No. 2824 You are invited to submit a double clerihew about a well-known sporting figure, past or present. The rules governing a clerihew are well set out in its Wikipedia entry but here are some additional pointers from the poet James Michie, a master of the form, who regularly contributed clerihews to The Spectator: ‘Clerihews, in my view, must be concise (no elephantine last line), written in straightforward English without inversions; and they are all the better for having some connection, however tenuous, with the real life or character of their subject.’ Please email entries (up to four each) to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 13 November. Here are

Competition: Back to school

Spectator literary competition No. 2823 This week’s assignment offers an opportunity to put yourselves into the 8-year-old shoes of future heads of state or literary giants. You are invited to submit a school essay or poem written at the age of eight by any well-known person, living or dead, entitled ‘My Pet’. Please email entries, of up to 16 lines or 150 words, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 6 November. Here are the results of this week’s challenge, in which competitors were asked to supply a postscript to any well-known novel.

Competition: Shakespeare does Dallas

Spectator literary competition No. 2822 This week’s challenge is to submit an extract from a scene from a contemporary soap opera (TV or radio) as Shakespeare might have written it. Please email entries, of up to 16 lines, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 30 October. Here are the results of this week’s challenge, in which competitors were invited to write a poem either in free verse mocking rhymed, metrical verse or in conventional verse mocking free verse.

Competition: Following in the footsteps of Virgil

Spectator literary competition No. 2821 Following in the footsteps of Virgil This week, in a challenge inspired by Virgil’s Georgics, you are invited to supply a poem that provides instruction or useful information. The Georgics, a didactic poem that spans four books, is part agricultural manual, part political poem. Although it was published way back in 29 BC, or thereabouts, its lessons can still be applied today: a team of Italian archaeologists recently planted a vineyard using wine-growing techniques prescribed by Virgil. Please email entries, of up to 16 lines, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 23 October. Here are the results of this week’s challenge, in which competitors were invited to merge

Competition: provide a PS to a classic

Spectator literary competition No. 2820 Barbara Hardy’s Dorothea’s Daughter and Other Nineteenth Century Postscripts is a collection of short stories in which Professor Hardy imagines significant conversations between characters some time after their novel has ended. These postscripts enter into dialogue with the original narratives by developing suggestions in the text rather than changing the plot in any way. How about coming up with your own postscript to any well-known novel? Please email entries, of up to 150 words, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 16 October. Here are the results of this week’s challenge, in which competitors were invited to provide poems, in the manner of Harry Graham, questioning the

Competition: Hughes vs Larkin, whose side are you on?

This week we’ve got Ted Hughes in the red corner and Philip Larkin in the blue. Whose side would you be on? You are invited to write a poem either in free verse mocking rhymed, metrical verse or in conventional verse mocking free verse. Please email entries, of up to 16 lines, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 9 October and mark them Competition 2819. Here are the results of this week’s challenge, in which competitors were asked to provide a short story with an ingenious twist at the end. Best wishes

Competition: merge some literary greats

This year saw the largest-ever merger between two publishing houses when Penguin and Random House joined forces in an attempt to compete with the might of Amazon. You are invited to effect a literary merger of a different kind by blending two existing well-known books and providing a synopsis of the new title. Thanks to Lawrence Douglas and Alexander George, who dreamt up this particular literary parlour game, giving us The Old Man and the Flea, ‘Hemingway’s classic as seen through a mirror Kafkaesquely, which finds the protagonist wrestling now not with a marlin but — yet more symbolically still — with a flea’. Please email entries of 150 words

Spectator competition: perverted proverbs

This week you are invited to provide a poem, in the manner of Harry Graham’s Perverted Proverbs, questioning the wisdom of a popular proverb. Perverted Proverbs, A Manual of Immorals for the Many was published in 1903 under the pseudonym Col. D Streamer. In it, Graham, who is probably best known for his Ruthless Rhymes (1898), a forerunner of Belloc’s Cautionary Tales, calls into question, with wit and dark humour, popular proverbs such as ‘Virtue is Its Own Reward’. Here is a taste to inspire you: Virtue its own reward? Alas! And what a poor one as a rule! Be Virtuous and Life will pass Like one long term of

Spectator literary competition No. 2816: Let’s twist

This week we are in Roald Dahl territory. You are invited to submit a short story of up to 150 words with an ingenious twist at the end. Please email entries, marked Competition 2816, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 18 September. Here are the results of the latest competition, in which competitors were invited to submit an application in verse, from the poet of their choice, for the position of poet laureate.

Spectator literary competition No. 2813: Poetic pitch

If poets hoping to be Laureate had been required to apply in verse for the position we would now have an interesting archive of poems. You are invited to provide examples of the poetic pitches that might have been made since the role was created in 1668. How about John Milton or Alexander Pope, deliberately passed over by the government of the day because of their questionable politics, or Byron, ruled out on account of his scandalous private life? Please email entries of 16 lines maximum to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 28 August and mark them Competition 2813. Here are the results of this week’s competition, in which competitors were asked to submit

Spectator literary competition No. 2812: Bookish

The CEO of Amazon Jeff Bezos has said ‘the physical book and bookstores are dead’. This week competitors are invited to celebrate this endangered species and submit a poem (of up to 16 lines) in praise of bookshops. Please email entries  to lucy @ spectator.co.uk by midday on 21 August and mark them Competition 2812. Here are the results of this week’s challenge, in which competitors were asked to submit a letter liberally sprinkled with evidence of an imperfect grasp of foreign languages. There has been already a welcome influx of newcomers, which is great to see. Keep ’em coming.