Larkinesque

Taken from Graham Fulton’s new collection Glitches of Mortality ( Pindrop Press, £ 10), Larkineque brings together the morose bard of Hull and the Beeb’s premier cookery show in a marriage as unexpected as it is effective. Inspired by the poet and a contestant who shares the same name, Larkinesque finds in Masterchef the same notes of despair that mark Larkin’s late period to great comic effect.

it’s a brutal cosmos, we die and we’re gone, but right now I’m more concerned

with the the Welsh competitor of Chinese descent on Masterchef

called Larkin

who started off really well and created

lots of psychotic dishes using fish bones

and smoke and a bicycle pump up a duck’s arse which everyone creamed their jeans over, but in the last couple of days he’s gone to pot and actually produced a grotesque

inedible soufflé

inside the scooped- out skin of a mango which oozed and slopped all over the floor

and now seems incapable

of making anything more complex

than beans on toast

and his blowtorch has stopped working

and he’s forgotten to switch the oven on

and in my opinion

he’s finished completely finished

You can find a copy of Glitches of Immortality by Graham Fulton at the Scottish Poetry Library, 5 Crichton’s Close, Edinburgh EH8 8DT. For poetry enquiries, e- mail reception@ spl. org. uk or visit www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk