Competition: Write a book blurb to repel readers

You were on stellar form this week on the darker side of spring: the entry was full of wit and invention. There were references to Larkin, who could always be relied on to see the bleaker side of things (‘their greenness is a kind of grief’), as well as to Eliot and Thomas Edward Brown. There were also nice echoes of Ogden Nash and Wordsworth. Nicholas Holbrook and Josephine Boyle were unlucky losers and I especially liked Ray Kelley’s heartfelt closing couplet: ‘It’s not by mere coincidence that vernal/ Rhymes so immaculately with infernal.’ The winners, printed below, earn £25 each. Bill Greenwell takes the extra fiver.

Bill Greenwell

At night the young man’s fancy burns

With unrequited lust;

His thighs expand, his stomach churns,

            He shudders with disgust —

He hates himself, he hates the scent

            Of buds, the songs of birds.

With winter gone, his fast intent’s

            Too terrible for words.

In spring, incomprehensible,

            He springs up like a weed,

With thoughts beyond defensible

            And desperate to breed.