Any Other Competitions?
 

Hallo,

Are there any other regular magazine competitions apart from The Spectator, Oldie and New Statesman?

Many thanks,

Nico

But you may find, Nicholas, that the Washington Post doesn't give you much to get your teeth into. The competitions are mostly attempts at jokey one-liners, often incomprehensibly parochial, with no sign of the 150 words of prose or 16 lines of verse that we are accustomed to. On the other hand, if you fancy taking the names of two actual American race-horses and inventing an "amusing" name for the foal, it might appeal to you. I believe it's a competition that they run with great frequency.

Oh, and did I mention the prizes? I'd better not ...

Thanks very much Roger, it's nice to know it's out there.

Brian - thanks for the tip. You're quite right, it doesn't seem my sort of thing, but it's nice to know that it's there.

I'll see if I can get the ghost of Jaspistos on my OuiJa board, failing anything else's turning up.

Brian, they do the foal contest twice a year, but there are probably six to ten contests a year that call for verse of some kind (limericks, rhyming obituaries, etc.), and many of the non-verse contests are nothing at all like the foal contest. But yes, many contests are pretty much joke contests in which you write a one- or two-liner. What's wrong with jokes? And yes, you don't get money for a prize, but they do print up over 700,000 copies of your fabulous wit, as well as display it on a widely-read website, and for me it's all about the glory.

And Nicholas, Brian may insult the contest but he has had winning entries 14 times. (They actually keep statistics, so this is an exact number I was able to look up).

It seems worth asking why there is no tradition of regular light verse competitions in USA publications and what the American light verse community is doing about it -- other than relying on us Brits to provide opportunities for them.

I actually met Jaspistos at a Speccie do many years ago. He was in the company of a very drunk Scots cartoonist and was charming. In the flesh he was James Michie who translated Latin poetry and also wrote poetry of his own. Hs 'Arizona Nature Myth' is his best, and bloody good it is too. In those days the Poetry Editor was P.J. Kavanagh, still with us and judging the 'Adlestrop' competition where I was a runner-up. Fings ain't what they used to be, but then they never were.

Roger, it wasn't my intention to insult the WP contest, which is occasionally fun, but to point out to Nicholas that it is a very different kind of competition (and one which rarely, if ever, offers any scope for extended writing) from the Speccie, Staggers and Oldie.

I love jokes, but the problem I have with their one-liners is that the winners are often about American politicians or flash-in-the-pan personalities that I've never even heard of, so I tend to stare at the results blank-faced. That's what I meant by "parochial".

As something of an aficionado - that's 'bore' in real money - of British horse racing, perhaps I should suggest Vicky at the NS emulate our cousins across the pond and have us do the foal business over here.

Roger and Brian - thanks again, I'll ruminate. Or cogitate. Or something like that. It's good to know your views on these things.

Adrian - if you do, would you publish a list of horses for the benefit of the rest of us? I could always invent some, I suppose.

John - It must have been splendid to meet the man. I believe I have some of Michie's translations about the house.

Hi Nicholas,

There are lots of competitions Here at the Southbank Centre Poetry Library. And if you Register for Newsletter you'll get regular emails with the latest ones.

Talk of Jaspistos, aka James Michie, made me go to my poetry bookcase and get his book called "Last Poems", published posthumously in 2008; he died of throat cancer in 2007. His poems were witty and most were short, the last one in the book being:

Cancer, or the Biter Bit

I used to fancy crabmeat as a treat:
Now Crab's the epicure, and I'm the meat.

Jayne

He was very attractive to women, though whether his poetry had anything to do with it I really couldn't say.

Jayne - thanks very much. I'll see how long it takes me to bring myself to part with an entry fee.


John - what a thought: I'd never considered that my own lack of success might be a silent condemnation of my verse!

If you look at the Penguin "Martial in English," you will probably agree with me that Michie blew away his contemporary Martial translators.

I wish there was a "like" for posts such as yours.