In Competition No. 3167 you were invited to submit a rhymed poem that is leadenly prosaic in tone and content.

When it comes to the joys of bad poetry, McGonagall tends to steal the show. But I also have a soft spot for Amanda McKittrick Ros, whose novels — and verse — provide passages of inadvertent hilarity to rival the worst of Bulwer Lytton (eyes are described as ‘globes of glare’; alcohol is the ‘powerful monster of mangled might’).