Competition
Spectator competition winners: Let’s parler Franglais
In Competition No. 3245, you were asked to take a passage from a classic of French literature and recast it…
Spectator competition winners: poems for St George in Bono-metrics
In Competition No. 3244, you were invited to submit a poem to mark St George’s Day that rivals in awfulness…
Spectator competition: poems about Shackleton’s Endurance
In Competition No. 3243, you were invited to submit a poem about the recent discovery of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance.…
Spectator competition winners: The polar bear who came to tea
In Competition No. 3242, you were asked to submit a short story that is a mash-up of cli-fi with a…
Spectator competition winners: spring triolets
In Competition No. 3241, you were invited to submit a spring triolet. Banjo Paterson, the bard of the bush, had…
Spectator competition winners: lives in three limericks
In Competition No. 3240, you were invited to tell the life story of a well-known figure in three limericks. In…
Spectator competition winners: political manifestos inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien and Lewis Carroll
In Competition No. 3239, you were invited to submit political manifestos inspired by literary heroes. Sajid Javid loves Ayn Rand:…
Spectator competition winners: poems about literary feuds
In Competition No. 3238, you were invited to submit a poem about a literary feud. Wallace Stevens’s 1936 fisticuffs with…
Spectator competition winners: Monosyllabic short stories
In Competition No. 3237, you were invited to submit a short story using words of only one syllable. This challenge…
Spectator competitions winners: ‘O, my love is like…’
In Competition No. 3236, you were invited to submit a poem that begins ‘Oh my love is like…’ . From…
Spectator competition winners: Gulliver’s Day Out and other literary prequels
In Competition No. 3235, you were invited to invent a prequel to a well-known work of literature and supply an…
Spectator competition winners: Covid’s metamorphoses
In Competition No. 3234, you were invited to submit either a poem or a short story entitled ‘Covid’s metamorphoses’. Thanks…
Spectator competition winners: meet the new Mr Men
In Competition No. 3233, you were invited to invent a new character for the Mr Men/Little Miss series by Roger…
2021 in sonnets
In Competition No. 3232, you were invited to retell a news story from the past year in sonnet form. An…
Spectator competition winners: pretentious wine writing
In Competition No. 3231, you were invited to supply an example of pretentious wine writing. Space is tight and the…
Double issue
In Competition No. 3230, you were invited to supply a double acrostic poem, the first and last letters of each…
Spectator competition winners: Harold Pinter’s Nativity
In Competition No. 3229, you were invited to provide the story of the Nativity retold in the style of a…
Spectator competition winners: Goldfinger for tots
In Competition No. 3228, you were invited to provide a well-known extract from adult literature rewritten for inclusion in an…
Spectator competition winners: presidential mnemonics
In Competition No. 3227, you were invited to provide verses to help children remember the sequence of the last eight…
Spectator competition winners: ‘O scintillate, bright orb celestial! Gleam’ (‘Twinkle, twinkle, Little Star’)
In Competition No. 3226, you were invited to rewrite, in pompous and prolix style, any well-known simple poem. The seed…
Dominic Raab’s ‘Nightmare Song’
In Competition No. 3225, you were invited to provide a version of the Lord Chancellor’s ‘Nightmare Song’ from Iolanthe for…
Spectator competition winners: tourist misinformation
In Competition No. 3224, you were invited to submit snippets of misleading advice either for tourists visiting Britain or for…
Spectator competition winners: Beano acrostics
In Competition No. 3223, you were invited to supply an acrostic poem in which the first letter of each line,…
Spectator competition winners: dystopian animal stories
In Competition No. 3222, you were invited to supply a dystopian short story that incorporates as many collective nouns for…
Spectator competition winners: odes on the Marble Arch Mound
In Competition No. 3221, you were invited to submit an ode on the Marble Arch Mound. The 25 metre-high artificial…
