Spectator competition winners: poems with multisyllabic rhyme words
In Competition No. 3296, you were invited to provide a poem whose rhyme words are all at least three syllables.…
Spectator competition winners: odes to unglamorous vegetables
In Competition No. 3294, you were invited to provide the first 16 lines of an ode to a turnip or…
Spectator competition winners: poems for Betty Boothroyd
In Competition No. 3292, you were invited to provide a poem to mark the death of Betty Boothroyd. The formidable…
Spectator competition winners: the Lord’s Prayer as a sonnet
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
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
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
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
In Competition No. 3286, you were invited to submit a toe-curling Valentine poem to Harry, or to the love object…
On song
In Competition No. 3285, you were invited to supply an extract from the libretto of a musical based on the…
Spectator competition winners: cheerful poems for 2023 after Tennyson
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’
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
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
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
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
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
In Competition No. 3272, you were invited to imagine a well-known diarist, real or fictitious, commenting on contemporary events. This…
