Spectator competition winners: royal clerihews
In Competition No. 3193 you were invited to submit clerihews (two couplets, AABB, metrically clunky, humorous in tone) on members…
Spectator competition winners: animals get their revenge on humankind
In Competition No. 3192 you were invited to submit a short story that features an animal (or animals) taking revenge…
The bard responds to news that he has been cancelled
In Competition No. 3191 you were invited to submit a Shakespearean soliloquy reflecting on the news that the Bard has…
Spectator competition winners: the novels you will never read
In Competition No. 3190 you were invited to submit the first paragraph of your least favourite type of novel. Sci-fi…
Spectator competition winners: poems about favourite smells
In Competition No. 3189 you were invited to submit a poem about a favourite smell. This challenge certainly seemed to…
Spectator competition winners: the hell of a foreign holiday
In Competition No. 3188, a challenge designed to make us all feel better about the looming prospect of another enforced…
Spectator competition winners: topical sea shanties
In Competition No. 3187 you were asked to provide a sea shanty on a topical theme. This challenge was an…
Spectator competition winners: mischievous acrostics
In Competition No. 3186 you were invited to supply an acrostic poem praising or dispraising a public figure, in which…
Spectator competition winners: ‘England in 2021’ (sonnets after Shelley)
In Competition No. 3185 you were invited to compose a sonnet called ‘England in 2021’. The challenge was inspired by…
Spectator competition winners: jokes in verse form
In Competition No. 3184 you were invited to tell a joke in verse form. This challenge, suggested by a reader…
Spectator competition winners: adverbial short stories
In Competition No. 3183 you were invited to submit a short story entitled ‘My Year of Living [insert adverb of…
Spectator competition winners: Edward Lear and Pam Ayres write dirges
In Competition No. 3182 you were invited to rewrite a famous piece of light verse with a dirge-like, hieratic tone…
Spectator competition winners: publishers rejecting literary classics
In Competition No. 3181 you were invited to submit a letter by a publisher rejecting a well-known literary classic. The…
Belloc-esque cautionary tales for our times
In Competition No. 3180 you were invited to submit a Belloc-esque cautionary tale featuring a high-profile public figure. Cautionary Tales…
Christmas hits rewritten as sonnets
In Competition No. 3179 you were invited to submit a Christmas hit single rewritten as a sonnet. This seasonal challenge…
What the Dickens
In Competition No. 3178 you were invited to submit an extract from a Dickensian novel based around the name of…
What Mr Micawber thinks of Charles Dickens
In Competition No. 3177 you were invited to submit a well-known fictional person’s view of their author. Highlights in a…
Spectator competition winners: letters to cities
In Competition No. 3176 you were invited to write a poem to a city. This challenge was inspired by both…
‘This Be The Prequel’ (and other poetic prequels)
In Competition No. 3175 you were invited to submit a prequel to a well-known poem. C. Paul Evans’s opening to…
Spectator competition winners: poems for a qwerty keyboard
In Competition No. 3174 you were invited to write a poem in which each line begins with the letters A…
Spectator competition winners: deflationary couplets
In Competition No. 3173 you were invited to give a fresh twist to a well-known single line of poetry by…
‘Today we have naming of tiers…’: poems about coronavirus messaging
In Competition No. 3172 you were invited to submit a poem about the government’s coronavirus messaging. Many of you, nudged…
Economies of scale
In Competition No. 3171, a challenge suggested by a kind reader, you were invited to submit a requiem in verse…
Spectator competition winners: Shakespeare lays down the law
In Competition No. 3170, a challenge inspired by Shelley’s assertion that ‘poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world’, you…
Keats and Covid: poems about autumn
In Competition No. 3169 you were invited to submit a poem about autumn in which the last letter of each…
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