Competition
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.’…
Praise be
In Competition No. 3095 you were invited to submit an elegy by a poet on another poet. The prompt…
That way madness lies
In Competition No. 3094 you were invited to submit a ‘Sonnet Found in a Deserted Mad House’. G.K. Chesterton once…
Write of passage
In Competition No. 3093 you were invited to submit an extract from a novel that chronicles the adult life of…
Spring villanelle
In Competition No. 3092 you were invited to submit a spring villanelle. The villanelle lends itself to themes of loss…
Cringe benefits
In Competition No. 3091 you were invited to submit toe-curlingly bad analogies. This is an idea shamelessly pinched from the…
The big reveal
In Competition No. 3090 you were invited to submit a recently discovered lost poem by a well-known poet that makes…
Climate change
In Competition No. 3089 you were invited to put your own spin on a weather forecast. The seed for…
Political noir
In Competition No. 3088 you were invited to submit a short story in the style of hard-boiled crime fiction set…
