"Nipped onto a Eurostar." Blimey. I just blued my monthly travel budget on a trip to Cheltenham!

Further to Basil's Porcupineand the other two collections I vaguely remember an NS comp collection called Salome dear, not in the fridge. Can anyone confirm?

I don't know about that one, Jerome, but I've got the ones John mentioned, An Owl in a Sack Troubles No Man, and Peacocks and Commas, both of which I treasure!

...And now, thanks to Bazza, I've just whizzed over to Amazon and bought a copy of Never Rub Bottoms With a Porcupine, to add to the collection.

Jayne

PS. Just whizzed back again to Amazon and yep, Salome, dear... is now on its way to me too. There are lots of copies available if you want one, for 1p plus £2.80 postage. Well worth it!

Thanks, Jayne. Will have a look.

A resounding harrumph, Brian, harrumph - we may be webbed of hand and foot in Norfolk, but the special gloves and shoes go a long way to help us appear safely in public. Lucky Jayne for actually getting to eat with you.(Are you still banned?)

E.O. Parrott edited a collection of parodies, pastiches, and the like called How to Be Well-Versed in Poetry. My copy is packed away out of reach, so I can't confirm this at the moment, but the internet tells me its poems were culled from Spectator entries, and memory tells me it was one of a series of such books.

Yes, it was one of a series, Xmas time & bog bookshelf stuff, levity the keynote. Eric circulated regular comp winners for contributions, & paid out quite satisfyingly. He did not have the most sophisticated taste in humour, & I remember being asked for smutty limericks for one collection. I obliged, of course.

I have this volume. Very good on verse forms. A Grammar school boy, like thee and me, Bazza. Though mine was Scotch of course.

This was the 50s/ early 60s NS comp anthology. There was also one called Salome Dear Not In The Porcupine, which was a pick of two volumes.

There are also three earlier competition anthologies:

New Statesman Competitions ed GF Stonier (1946)
New Statesman Competitions (original thinking!) ed Arthur Marshall (1955)
and also - from the start of the competitions in The Week-end Review -

The Week-end Calendar ed Gerald Barry (1932) - originally intended to be just competitions, but changed to include W-eR articles from 1930-1932 as well

At the time of writing you can see the first 240 or so comps on my OU research website, https://nscompsandpoets.wordpress.com/ - it's a bit raggedy but the material is there along with some solecisms and typos, for which apologies.

Bill

Thanks for posting this information about the earlier anthologies, Bill. Something to look out for in any surviving second hand bookshops.