Set by Hank T Romein In honour of Vincent Cable, who pronounced "awry" as if it rhymed with "Tory" (to much laughter in the House of Commons), we asked for poems relying on similar ignorance of how certain words should be pronounced

Report by Ms de Meaner

When I set this, I wasn't expecting poems making use of the well-known difficulties foreigners often have with words such as "tough", "bough" and "cough" all being pronounced differently. I had hoped for something much more unusual: words English people often go through their lives mispronouncing, even to the extent of believing that there are two words in the English language (eg, mis-led and mizzled) when there is only one. But I can see you tough-coughers had logic on your side. It's just that the resulting poems were not exactly riveting.

This week, Alanna Blake gets £25 as well as the Tesco vouchers. The others can have £15.

Next week: expect the annual Top 20 winners for 2007!

Food of love

I'd love to write poems like Keats

Or Byron or Shelley or Yeats;

I'd pen, in Wordsworthian style,

A fine metaphor or simile,

And give plenty vent to my soul,

Expressing in great hyperbole

Such feelings of sensitive power

That surely would move my amour

As one poet did: far from minor,

The female Rossetti, Christina.

Though some think conceits are a con

I might even emulate Donne.

But now that my thoughts are less rosy

Perhaps I'll forget about poesy,

For surely the best thing to keep is

A regular journal like Pepys.

Alanna Blake

Hail Vincent Cable

He abhors easy rhetoric, a stranger to cant,

On Northern Rock he is no dilettante.

Forthright and witty, he makes his points simply,

Prefers to state boldly, not broach, wink or imply.

Of all his great comrades, from Thorpe to Sir Menzies

His quirky acoustic could drive us to frenzies.

Compared to Nick Clegg, he's up in the clerestory,

Not grubbing about in the crypt, not his territory.

So hail this good fellow, wish him well on his route,

Acclaim him, sustain him, with many a shout.

Barbara Burge

Class pointers

The upper class look fondly,

On surnames like Cholmondeley:

It helps them know who's who - pace

Shibboleth - and helps to keep us in our place.

Are you well within their camp,

Like a Beaulieu or Beauchamp?

Or do you drive or cook or clean,

While they dine at Magdalene?

John Penny

No 4016 Head to the beaches

Set by J Seery

"Never has so much been decided for so many by so few," the Sun thundered on the subject of the EU. We want a Daily Mail/ Sun-type rant striking fear into its readers about the outrageous regulations Europe is about to impose on Britain - eg, a tax on people who do not sell the undersides of their toilet seats as advertising space, a ruling that all children should have names appropriate to either gender, a requirement that all scissors must have blades of two different metals . . . the more ludicrous, the better.

Max 125 words by 21 February

Email: comp@newstatesman.co.uk

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