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…
Famous writers on the art of saying no
In Competition No. 3168 you were invited to compose a response on the part of a well-known writer to an…
Spectator competition winners: the pleasures of bad poetry
In Competition No. 3167 you were invited to submit a rhymed poem that is leadenly prosaic in tone and content.…
Spectator competition winners: poems in praise of naked cyclists
In Competition No. 3166 you were invited to supply a poem either celebrating or lamenting the cancellation of Philadelphia’s annual…
Spectator competition winners: Would you give Anne Boleyn a job?
In Competition No. 3165 you were invited to supply a job reference for a well-known public figure, past or present,…
Spectator competition winners: patchwork poetry
In Competition No. 3164 you were invited to submit a poem in which each line comes from a different well-known…
Paradise Lost in four lines
In Competition No. 3163 you were invited to submit well-known poems encapsulated in four lines. Now that the internet has…
Tutti-bam! Frutti-boom! Musical double dactyls
In Competition No. 3162 you were invited to submit double dactyls on stars of popular or classical music. Fans of…
Spectator competition winners: Keatsian sonnets
In Competition No. 3161 you were invited to supply a sonnet with certain rhyme words to be used in a…
Spectator competition winners: killer short stories
In Competition No. 3160 you were invited to supply a short story whose opening sentence is ‘I have no idea…
Spectator competition winners: Poems without the letter ‘e’
In Competition No. 3159 you were invited to supply a poem that does not contain the letter ‘e’. This fiendish…
Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer meets Spock
In Competition No. 3158 you were invited to supply an extract describing a well-known fictional detective who finds themselves catapulted…
T.S. Eliot goes to Glastonbury
In Competition No. 3157 you were invited to describe a visit to Glastonbury or Glyndebourne in the style of an…
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