Competition

Spectator competition winners: poems for Betty Boothroyd

1 April 2023 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3292, you were invited  to provide a poem to mark the death of Betty Boothroyd. The formidable…

Food for thought

25 March 2023 9:00 am

Spectator competition winners: the Lord’s Prayer as a sonnet

18 March 2023 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3290, you were invited to recast the Lord’s Prayer as a sonnet. The late Frank Kermode reckoned…

Spectator competition winners: politically correct versions of works by unreconstructed male writers

11 March 2023 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3289, you were invited to provide an extract from a politically correct version of a work by…

Spectator competition winners: sonnets on embarrassing ailments

4 March 2023 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3288, you were invited to supply a sonnet on an embarrassing ailment. To make space for as…

Spectator competition winners: Shakespeare reviews West Side Story

25 February 2023 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3287, you were invited to supply a review of a film, novel, poem or play in the…

Spectator competition winners: toe-curling Valentine poems

18 February 2023 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3286, you were invited to submit a toe-curling Valentine poem to Harry, or to the love object…

On song

11 February 2023 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3285, you were invited to supply an extract from the libretto of a musical based on the…

Back to front

4 February 2023 9:00 am

Tears for peers

28 January 2023 9:00 am

New look

18 January 2023 10:00 pm

Spectator competition winners: cheerful poems for 2023 after Tennyson

14 January 2023 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3281, you were invited to provide 16 lines of cheerful welcome to 2023 in the metre of…

Spectator competition winners: ‘Email’: poems after Auden’s ‘Night Mail’

7 January 2023 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3280, you were invited to submit an updating of W.H. Auden’s ‘Night Mail’ entitled ‘Email’. ‘Night Mail’…

Spectator competition winners: lessons in citizenship from Oscar Wilde and P.G. Wodehouse

10 December 2022 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3278, you were invited to supply a well-known writer’s response to the question what makes the perfect…

Spectator competition winners: poems to mark the centenary of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb

3 December 2022 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3277, you were invited to supply a poem to mark the 100th anniversary of the discovery of…

Spectator competition winners: celebrity biographies with unfortunate misprints

26 November 2022 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3276, you were invited to supply an extract from the memoir of a celebrity with some unfortunate…

Spectator competition winners: Toe-curling analogies

12 November 2022 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3274, you were invited to supply toe-curling analogies. Bad writing has attracted some high-brow fans. J.R.R. Tolkien…

Spectator competition winners: Samuel Pepys on Liz Truss

29 October 2022 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3272, you were invited to imagine a well-known diarist, real or fictitious, commenting on contemporary events. This…

Spectator competition winners: poems about the Oxford comma

22 October 2022 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3271, you were invited to submit a poem about the Oxford comma. Thérèse Coffey’s much-maligned edict about…

Spectator competition winners: short stories entitled ‘The Queue’

15 October 2022 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3270, you were invited to submit a short story entitled ‘The Queue’. As well as inspiring this…

Spectator competition winners: poems about Her late Majesty’s favourite things

8 October 2022 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3269, you were invited to write a poem about Her late Majesty’s favourite things. Alongside the more…

Spectator competition winners: children’s stories get the horror treatment

1 October 2022 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3268, you were invited to recast an extract from children’s literature in the horror genre. In the…