Competition

Cut out

3 June 2023 9:00 am

Spectator competition winners: a liquid lunch with Dante

27 May 2023 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3300, you were invited to describe in verse a meal of your choice with a well-known poet,…

Songlines

20 May 2023 9:00 am

Spectator Competition Winners: haiku book reviews

13 May 2023 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3298, you were invited to provide a book review in three haiku. When I saw that the…

All in the mind

6 May 2023 9:00 am

Spectator competition winners: poems with multisyllabic rhyme words

29 April 2023 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3296, you were invited to provide a poem whose rhyme words are all at least three syllables.…

End of

22 April 2023 9:00 am

Spectator competition winners: odes to unglamorous vegetables

15 April 2023 9:00 am

In Competition No. 3294, you were invited to provide the first 16 lines of an ode to a turnip or…

Yawning gap

8 April 2023 9:00 am

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…