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Write a Haiku...

Although the shortest form of poetry, the haiku, a form of Japanese poetry, is bound by the greatest number of rather complex rules.

But as this page is meant to be fun, we'll make it easy.

The poem should be three lines, consisting of 17 syllables in three metrical phrases of five, seven, and five. They commonly contain some sort of reference to the season.

Try your hand at writing one. Click here to email it to us and we'll publish it in Poetry Corner.

This was our attempt... surely you can do better!

Green fish eat water.
Roughly fluttering, stars work.
Indifference falls.

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Write a really short story...

Write us a 50 word story and we'll publish it in our 50 Word Wonders.

The only rules are it must be exactly 50 words, must have a beginning, middle and an end and it must be your own work. Do feel free to give us a title for your story (the words won't be included in your 50-word limit) and don't forget to tell us your name.

Here's an example...

He sat at the table eating his cornflakes and reading the paper. There was a picture of a missing man with an appeal from his distraught wife. He looked closely. It wasn't his best side, he thought, as he rose, picked up his briefcase and kissed his new wife goodbye.

Click here to email us your 50 Word Wonder.

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Try our literary quiz...

1. What do Cecil Day-Lewis, John Masefield, William Wordsworth, Ben Jonson and Edmund Spenser have in common?

2. Which are the two cities referred to in Charles Dickens' A Tale Of Two Cities?

3. Where was Tess of the D'Urbervilles arrested?

4. Who lived with Jonathan and Judy Brown at 32 Windsor Gardens?

5. What was George Eliot's real name?

6. Name the author and the work from which the following first lines come:
a) April is the cruellest month...
b) It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
c) The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.
d) When shall we three meet again, in thunder, lightning, or in rain?
e) Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
f) Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

7. Which novel, written in 1954, has a title which is the English translation of Beelzebub?

8. For what two reasons, other than it being St George's Day, was April 23 special to William Shakespeare?

9. How many novels did Emily Bronte write?

10. What memento of her dead husband did Mary Shelley keep on her writing desk?

11. Oscar Wilde was inspired to write The Ballad of Reading Gaol, having been sentenced to two years' hard labour on what charge?

12. Who is the all-time best-selling fiction writer in the world, whose 78 crime novels have sold an estimated 2 billion copies?

13. What time is the clock striking in the opening sentence of 1984?

14. What did the owl and the pussycat have wrapped up in a five pound note, according to Edward Lear's famous poem?

15. What was Lewis Carroll's 'real' job?

Click here for the answers.