Competition
Back space
In Competition No. 3120 you were invited to submit a poem reflecting on the Apollo 11 moon landing written in…
Watch the birdie
In Competition No. 3119 you were invited to submit a poem about yellowhammers. This sparrow-sized songbird has inspired poetry from…
Here be monsters
In Competition No. 3118, which was inspired by Joan Didion’s wonderful essay of that title, you were invited to submit…
Speeches as sonnets
In Competition No. 3117 you were invited to recast a famous political speech as a sonnet. Lots of you…
Moggisms
In Competition No. 3116 you were invited to submit an extract from a government memo whose language would meet with…
Fabulous
In Competition No. 3115 you were invited to submit a fable for the 21st century, complete with moral. James Michie,…
Home delivery
In Competition No. 3114 you were invited to submit estate agents’ details in the style of a well-known author. …
Initial impressions
In Competition No. 3113 you were invited to submit an acrostic poem about a politician in which the first letter…
The Brexiteers
In Competition No. 3112 you were invited to submit an extract from Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Brexiteers. The title…
Spanish eyes
In Competition No. 3111 you were invited to submit William Topaz McGonagall’s poetic response to Magaluf. The Tayside Tragedian…
Redoing the hokey-cokey
In Competition No. 3110 you were invited to provide a version of the hokey-cokey filtered through the pen of a…
To bee or not to bee
In Competition No. 3109 you were invited to submit a short story entitled ‘The Last Bumble Bee’. The buff-tailed bumblebee,…
After Milton
In Competition No. 3108 you were invited to submit a sonnet with the following end rhymes: son, mire, fire, won,…
When two becomes one
In Competition No. 3107 you were invited to provide an extract that is a mash-up of two well-known works of…
Twister
In Competition No. 3106 you were invited to submit a poem with an ingenious twist at the end. This challenge,…
Belles of the ball
In Competition No. 3105 you were invited to submit a fragment of commentary on the Women’s World Cup delivered by…
Take three
In Competition No. 3104 you were invited to encapsulate the life story of a well-known person, living or dead, in…
Talking heads
In Competition No. 3103 you were invited to submit a Shakespearean soliloquy delivered by one of the contenders for the…
Fan mail
In Competition No. 3102 you were invited to submit a fan letter from one well-known person from the field of…
New ‘New Colossus’
In Competition No. 3101 you were invited to compose a contemporary take on ‘The New Colossus’, the 1883 sonnet by…
Life support
In Competition 3100 you were invited to pen an ode to Alexa or Siri. A recent Unesco study claimed that…
Animal magic
In Competition No. 3099 you were invited to dream up an imaginary animal that is a hybrid of two existing…
Verse and reverse
In Competition No. 3098 you were invited to submit a poem that can be read forwards and backwards, i.e. from…
The full English
In Competition No. 3097 you were invited to submit a poem about Englishness in the style of a well-known poet.…
Cheesy feat
In Competition No. 3096 you were invited to submit a short story that ends ‘I feel like a half-eaten gorgonzola.’…
