Thank you for applying / I hope you don’t find this too distressful / but your application was unsuccessful / Your verse is unsatisfactory to the nth degree / a cross between a dog’s dinner and a catastrophe / It’s the kind of drivelling doggerel / more suited to a sheet of bog roll / Your villanelles are vile / your haikus quite hopeless / your sonnets have as much class as soap-on-a-rope. Yes / and I’m afraid your ballads are bollocks / We wish you suffered from more writer’s blocks.

You write about buses and bin bags and crocs / you think you’re profound but you’re actually pro-lost. / And as for your poems on Clarkson, they’re close to litigious. / On the plus side, your spelling’s quite good / and your output’s prodigious.

Yours sincerely,

Professor A. P. Brearley

In other news, Toby Salt has tweeted that he has been appointed Poet-in-Residence for the BBC.

Tuesday September 4th

Thief

You caught me stealing a glance at you.

Ordered me to empty out my pockets.

I shook my booty onto the table:

a swiped charge card,

a nose I’d pinched,

one poached egg,

a ruler (half-inched),

a gaze I’d shifted,

some spirits lifted,

and selected other stolen moments.

You told me to stop thieving

and start behaving.

Fat chance.

I’ve even nicked myself

shaving.

Oh, what have I done? What on earth possessed me to do it? All is lost, irretrievably! I am cast out! I am forsaken!

I had meant to pay it back. It was only a temporary measure until I was back on my feet. There were yurts and holidays and all those books to pay for, and as soon as I’d landed a job or earned some money from my funeral poems, I was going to put that £10,000 back. With interest, probably. Everyone would have been happy. I didn’t think this would happen. Not this.

I thought the response to my poems had been more muted than usual. I sat back down to silence. Mary was the first to break it:

‘Where’s the money gone, Brian?’ she hissed. All eyes were on me.

‘I don’t – I don’t know what you mean?’ I stammered.

‘Yes, you do. Our money. Our battlefields money. I checked the account and it’s all gone.’

‘Oh, that money!’ I replied, thinking how I might calm the situation down. ‘Dr Miller needed it. To sort out all the payments and everything.’

‘I’ve spoken to Dr Miller already,’ she said, stonily. I stared down at my pistachios, knowing the game was up. ‘He’s been trying to get in touch with you since April. He’s not received a penny from you.’

I glanced up. Mary was furious. Liz had turned away in disgust. Kaylee looked as if she was going to thump me. Disappointment dripped from Chandrima’s eyes.

I tried to explain but Chandrima interrupted me before I’d even got as far as the yurt.