Lucy Vickery

In Competition No. 3306, you were invited to submit a poem about procrastination. Procrastination looms large in Out of Sheer Rage, Geoff Dyer’s hilarious account of his attempt to write a study of D.H. Lawrence, and it struck me as an excellent topic for a competition. As Samuel Johnson wrote, the tendency to put things

In Competition No. 3208 you were invited to submit a short story whose first or last line is: ‘“Is there anybody there?” said the Traveller.’ The given line opens Walter de la Mare’s slippery, haunting, much-anthologised ‘The Listeners’ and many entries echoed the 1912 poem’s supernatural theme. An honourable mention to George Simmers and David

In Competition No. 3309, you were invited to compose a poem starting with the last line of any well-known poem and ending with its first, the new poem being on a different subject from the original. Max Ross’s sonnet, reflecting on the demands of the task in hand, earns a commendation: The task for which

In Competition No. 3322 you were invited to submit a poem reflecting on the fate of the Sycamore Gap tree, planted in the late 19th century by Newcastle lawyer John Clayton. Antony Gormley, who has a studio in Hexham near the site of the felled tree, has described it as ‘a marker in the lie

In Competition No. 3325 you were invited to describe an encounter between Bertie Wooster and James Bond in the style of P.G. Wodehouse. The seed for this popular challenge was Ben Schott’s much-praised 2018 homage to P.G. Wodehouse, Jeeves and the King of Clubs, in which Jeeves and Wooster enter into the world of international

In Competition No. 3337 you were invited to submit a soliloquy composed by Giovanni Fontana’s marble statue of Shakespeare, which has graced Leicester Square since 1874. Bill Greenwell, Alan Millard, Sylvia Fairley and Paul A. Freeman were star performers, but a standing ovation and £20 go to the winners below. Here stand I, with Lord

In Competition No. 3340 you were asked to submit a poem calling for a particular food to be banned. It was Julie Bindel’s impassioned anti-balsamic vinegar piece that prompted me to invite you to share your culinary bêtes-noires (three of mine – Battenberg, tripe and Liquorice Allsorts – cropped up in the entry). Adrian Fry

In Competition No. 3341 you were invited to submit a poem about a great work of art –  a challenge prompted by George Steiner’s observation that ‘the best readings of art are art’. The writer Geoff Dyer has cited W.H. Auden’s 1938 ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’ –  about Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s ‘Landscape with the Fall

In Competition No. 3342 you were invited to submit a proposal of marriage in the style of a famous writer. The overall standard was high, and entries that impressed and amused include Bob Trewin’s Hemingway, Dorothy Pope’s Larkin and Nicholas Lee’s Conan Doyle. Janine Beacham’s Masefield’s also shone: I must go down on one knee

In Competition No. 3345, you were invited to submit a report on a popular sporting event as it might have been written by someone who is not first and foremost a sportswriter. In a high-class field, David Silverman, the Revd Dr Peter Mullen and Ben Hale were unlucky to lose out on the £25 which