[Marion Shore]

I know some of you send multiple submissions to the Speccie under different names. How does this work? You have to include your real name and address, don't you? So basically, it's okay to compete with yourself, since she knows it's you anyway. Is that right?

[Jayne Osborn]

Hi Marion,

You could always ask friends to be 'you', as it were, so they'd give their names and addresses with your additional poems.

All you'd have to do is to trust them to hand over the dosh when they - sorry, you - win! Got any jump-on-the-bandwaggon, would-be poet mates? Don't ask them. Hehe :-)

[Chris O'Carroll]

Although I've sent in multiple entries more often than I can count, the issue of a pseudonym has come up only once, when Lucy e-mailed me to request one since I'd won twice that week. From now on, when I submit more than one entry, I plan to double-sign the extras -- "Chris or X." So if lightning ever strikes again, they'll have a nom standing by.

[Jayne Osborn]

Hi Chris,

It's extremely heartening to know that it's even possible to win twice in one comp. But the incidence is probably akin to that lightning you mentioned...apart from one or two contenders, including your very good self, of course, who's living proof that it can strike twice in the same place :-)

[John Whitworth]

For the A to Z competition I sent in both of my 156 word pieces. I put my name and address at the top and stipulated that the second of my entries was to go under the name of Fergus Pickering. Fergus Pickering can also be found in The Faber Book of Blue Verse as the translator of some rude bits of Latin and Greek. Fergus HAS won the odd competition though not, I think, at the same time as old JW. I have a female alter ego, Phoebe Flood. She sends poems to Myslexia and stuff like that. I don't think she's won anything. I don't make a very attractive girl.

[Jayne Osborn]

I don't make a very attractive girl.

Perhaps it's the beard, John?

Your 'Phoebe Flood' pseudonym just reminded me of my Oldie win in Sept 02, which went:
Poor disadvantaged Feebee White,
Whose parents couldn't spell things rite...
and went on to complain about people who give names to their children that they can't bloody spell. I know of a Hedei (meant to be Heidi) and a girl referred to as Tabitha even though her parents misspelt it as Tabithia. And others...

[Roger Slater]

John's being modest. Phoebe may not have won anything, but she did have a poetry collection published, and I recommend it to one and all.