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Today's reading: The Rialto no.95, pp46-064. (The Rialto 95 Completed.) The title comes from Michael Mackmin's introduction and using it feels a little like being in a room with facing mirrors, as he says the expression was said by an elderly Tai Chi master, explaining a pile of defeated opponents. Mackmin uses the expression to describe his approach to Lockdown, and here am I using it to explain my approach to reading more poetry. The image reflects towards infinity in ever reducing amounts. Or should I be using a Russian doll analogy? Is someone going to take my use of the phrase to surround a nub of an idea they have, just as my idea was within Michael Mackmin's use and his within the elderly Tai Chi master's? Well given my readership reach, this is possibly the small one in the middle anyway, so let's leave that there. The Rialto is my favourite poetry magazine (I stress that I say this about all the magazines I subscribe to) because it its format is solely to hand over to the poetry. It has no reviews or interviews, no articles or distractions, just 64 pages (excluding the cover, which football programmes do not exclude) of poem after poem. What I love even more is the amount of space given to each poem. Large A4 pages of beautiful, high quality white paper with a single poem on it. Well there is a little doubling up if the poems are very short, but always there is plenty of SPACE for the poem to express itself. Jim McElroy's poem, 'Coal Hole' for instance has all 36 lines in one place, no turning of pages, so that the ending, 'The night's clock ticks time on the mantle', is able to not only allude to the passing of time, both before and after the poem, but can do this with the emphasis that there is no more to come from the poet, it must all happen in your own mind. I chose to read this magazine next because I am struggling to find time for poetry reading right now as I aim to give the website a more meaningful appearance. It is only 6 weeks old from conception till this moment now after all. I fear I have created my own in-built non-poetry reading distraction, without realising that was what my mind was subconsciously after all along! Double that for poetry writing. Nothing has been written since the day the site and the blog began. Hopefully 'it will all come out in the wash', as my patients used to say to me. (I wonder if I ever said anything helpful to them?) So, The Rialto is the perfect magazine for getting you right back in there. No toes dangling over the edge, one tiny run up and in you plunge. It's my preferred approach to swimming pools; it is my preferred approach to poetry reading. There is only the barest description of the poets' biographies, all of whom have much more in print than me, and are immensely better qualified to be in print with poetry on several levels, yet I read this magazine feeling this is a level I could aspire to, so in that sense it is very encouraging. Me on a very good day, only that day may still be in the future yet! My favourite poem today was 'a ruru named Murray, who I've been trying to write about since January', by Paula Harris, which after all I have said is on two pages, but as the pages are facing, nothing is lost. The tale concerns a ruru, which we are told in the poem is a morepork, though I still had to Google this word to find out a morepork is a Tasmanian spotted owl, and in the pictures looks essentially like what you would call 'an owl'. The poem is written over 12 verses, is playful, has a comedic use of idea repetition, and follows the ruru from its discovery abandoned as a baby in a bush to its letting loose by Kirsty's brother and, like the poem 'Cole Hole' I mention above, ends with an ending that alludes to future time, of wondering where the ruru is now. Along the way the poem plays with ideas, that orbit around finding the baby bird, naming it, feeding it, looking after it, discovering more about it, and finally deciding that Murray (the ruru) is an Egyptian god, that needs setting free. "4. it fascinates me that ruru were named after the sound of their call but in English we called them morepork and claimed this was the sound of their call the sounds ruru and morepork don't sound anything alike is the bird talking to us in two different languages?" Just like poetry, I thought. We humans bring ourselves to a poem and interpret it in our own sound. I read this poem at pretty much face value, of a significant moment in time. It's a story, with a beginning middle and end, and the memory of Murray, who made its own impact in the life of the poem's protagonist (and obviously we always think this is the poet themselves). Now that the bird is gone, the poem tries to hold on to the special place Murray had. Murray lives on for ever within the poem, or at least the memory of Murray does, even if we do not in fact know what ever happened to the bird itself. Listen I have run out of time. I spent so much time scouring the biographies looking for leads to links I could use on the webpage, that this abrupt end can be a tribute to that time lost to poetry writing itself. Let it be a reminder to me that the poetry must always come first and the blog and website second. This is early days, future strategies must be put in place to protect the original hope, to get better at writing poetry. If you have any thoughts on this do please write them to me, I am always open to listening to others ideas, and it's no fun writing in isolation. Soundtrack : 'No Dope Fiend' cassette. See Thee Objects on Bandcamp.

The commission is an unusual beast, someone asks for a poem on a subject, the poet goes away and thinks about it and comes up with the goods. Today I heard Ian McMillan's poem for 'The Front Page' BBC Radio 4 programme. Asked to write about a poem for the Euro 2020 final the week before England played Italy, and lost on penalties, then delivering it week after. The poem is never going to T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland, but it did its job. I also understood it, and got it in one, unlike T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland, which I have heard many times, but in truth need academics to point out to me why it is good. In the poem, McMillan refers to Eliot, and as a reader it would enhance the experience if I knew the reference. (I didn't.). McMillan is a decent chap, he is not going to condemn me for not picking it up, but I should I condemn myself? There is so much poetry about, how can I know it all? As it so goes I have read a good deal of it, but when I am sat in a reading, am I supposed to bring my poetry history with me or simply enjoy the moment, are there two opposites, or have I constructed this myself? If I don't know my poetry history then I am freed from the challenge of acknowledging it? I know my music better, so in my world I would say - should a young rapper know the songs of Elvis and the Beatles, should they even know the history of the song the rapper may have sampled, or is it enough to know your own genre well, or even, then just live in the moment and enjoy the song? I find, a little like Classical music, there is an inbuilt elitism in poetry that is hard to shake off, even if the poet themselves tells you to shake it off. (And by Classical music I mean Mozart, Beethoven and that crowd, not Led Zep and Black Sabbath, which is how I hear the word being used now! Though, actually that has its elitism, too!) In spite of all this I can tell that McMillan's poem is no The Wasteland, so there is a difference, and getting back to the beginning commissions make for a very different, more accessible poetry. I guess this is because in this circumstance the poet is writing for the audience and not themselves. When I read Simon Armitage's Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic, a book filled with commissioned poetry I enjoyed it greatly, but ultimately it did leave me a little bit hollow by the end. What Armitage is so good at is writing in a poetic voice that is both authentic, and poetic, it feels like if you had sat down long enough thinking about it with a pen in your hand, you could have written it, too. This is a wonderful deception. As Poet Laurette, suddenly everything he writes feels like it is a commission, almost by the nature of the job. I have read his Lockdown Poem and watched the Lockdown film on television, both wonderful pieces of works, that describe explain Lockdown better than any documentary ever could. Poetry gets behind the mere facts and emphases the emotional, and though we believe we are a religion-less society, it speak in the language of our spiritual being, too. I notice, though that when presented to the World on the internet, the Lockdown poem is presented with a backbeat, and acted out images, and I wonder at the reason for this. Am I being elitist for noticing it, am I rejecting it? Or am I pleased that Armitage is doing his bit to bring poetry to the World in a populist way, surely another of the possible unwritten role of the Laureate's job. The film which intermingles poetry with talking heads, is perfect time capsule for the future. The individual stories of people affected by Covid-19, are emotional in themselves, woven into the overall arc of a poem provided by Armitage, they become a part of the poetic piece, and the emotion is turned up to 11 (a cultural reference I expect you to get, but if you don't it feels like I though of the joke!). To help the watcher along two ethereal dancers interpret the parts where Armitage is talking as if to emphasise we are talkking in poetry language now. I good trick, but once I spotted it I started to laugh at the thought that every time Armitage gives a reading in the real world two dancers would suddenly appear in the wings. Today I watched I don't even know how, it came to me via Facebook I believe, and I notice that the poet has put a backdrop of old film footage to enhance the film. I always wonder at this, it is almost as if the poet is concerned that the poem will not be entertaining enough in its own right, that there is an alternative show going on in case you don't want to listen to what's being said enough. It's a tremendous piece, as authentic as you get written by person from Glasgow, about what that experience is like. Such a great feat. Sadly no BBC4 commissions await for the poet, so we create our own film to be in. The commission as income, that what it is there fore and quite right. There is so much poetry about yet so few jprofessional poets, it seems all wrong to the likes of me that loves poetry, but look at me I prefer the free readings to the paid for ones, and I am a generous person.

18 December 2021 Here is 14 poetry things to do today! See these events and more featured on the Poetry News page. ​ 1) (From Eventbrite email) ​ Online Open Mic! by Sidewalk Beirut ​ Every Sunday we gather on Zoom to share all forms of self-expression. You sign up when you log in by mentioning it to the host. Each performer has 5-7 minutes. We welcome all forms of art and all languages. The Zoom room opens at 8:15 PM (currently GMT+2 = Lebanon time) for sign-ups, and we kickoff the night around 8:30 PM. Sunday 19 December 6:30 PM GMT ​ Sidewalk Beirut went online early 2020 due to the pandemic and since then has had attendees from all over the world. The Sidewalk online community has members from from the Netherlands, Denmark, Morocco, Switzerland, the UK, the US, Canada, Cyprus, Scotland, Pakistan and of course members from all over Lebanon. With every new event, we are meeting new poets and expanding. You are also more than welcomed to just attend and listen, there is never a pressure on anyone to perform and we value our listeners just as much as our performers. ​ Online Open Mic! Registration, Multiple Dates | Eventbrite ​ ​ 2) (From Nine Pens website) ​ Virtual launch of Yasmin Djoudi's pamphlet 'Vocation' ​ Sun, December 19, 2021 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM GMT Online Cost: Free Join us for the launch of Yasmin Djoudi pamphlet 'Vocation' with special guest readings.from Stuart McPherson, Hannah Copley and Jem Henderson. ​ Are you travelling alone? Vocation explores a world pushing itself to the limit in the single-minded pursuit of a calling. Aeroplanes and taxis shuttle us between unexpected destinations: by the side of an airborne conspiracy theorist; a city centre with a knack for psychosexual confrontation; or bearing witness to a tropical plant’s delusions of grandeur. The external drifting of the pamphlet’s speakers is set at odds with their unrelenting internal drive for something more. Against the backdrop of a planet shrinking through over-connection, Vocation follows our attempts to outrun the emptying sands of the hourglass in a race towards some ever-shifting personal goal. About The Poets: Yasmin Djoudi works across poetry and performance. She lives in London. She is new to all of this. Hannah Copley is a writer, editor and academic. She is the author of Speculum (Broken Sleep Books, October 21) and an editor at Stand magazine. Recent work has appeared in POETRY, The London Magazine, Bath Magg, Poetry Birmingham, Into the Void, Under the Radar and others. She won the 2019 Newcastle Poetry Prize and the 2018 York Literature Prize. Hannah is a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Westminster. ​ Stuart McPherson is a poet from Leicester in the United Kingdom. His debut pamphlet ‘Pale Mnemonic’ was published in April 2021 by Legitimate Snack. The pamphlet ‘Water Bearer’ will be published in December 2021 by Broken Sleep Books. His work explores the relationship between the family, trauma, and fragile masculinity. ​ Jem Henderson is a queer poet from Leeds, UK with an MA in Creative Writing from York St. John University. They have been published in Civic Leicester's Black Lives Matter, Streetcake and recently won a Creative Future award for underrepresented writers. A book, Genderfux, including their work is due out in 2022 from Nine Pens. Their ramblings can be found on twitter @jem_face. ​ To book go to: Launch of 'Vocation' by Yasmin Djoudi - Nine Pens Press Tickets, Sun 19 Dec 2021 at 19:00 | Eventbrite ​ ​ ​ ​ 3) (From The Poetry Society newsletter) COP26 and Poetry Ten young poets spoke out against climate injustice and called for natural and humane solutions to the climate crisis in a live event on 6 November at the recent climate change conference COP26, which you can watch here. ​ “Where were you / when the seas / were warming?” A Young Poets Network showcase | #COP26 - YouTube ​ ​ ​ ​ 4) (From Seren Books newsletter) ​ Alternative Stories and Fake Realities Seren Books 40th Anniversary ​ In this edition we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Seren Books, the publisher from south Wales responsible for launching the careers of many poets and for putting out a series of memorable poetry collections including a few featured previously on Alt Stories. ​ In this podcast you can hear an interview with Seren’s outgoing poetry editor Amy Wack who leaves the press at the end of October 2021. She looks back at her time with Seren and the changes to the style and readership of poetry since she joined. ​ The presenter of this podcast is Nadia Wyn Abouayen and the readers from Alt Stories are Tiffany Clare and Chris Gregory. ​ See Seren Books 40th Anniversary (buzzsprout.com) ​ ​ 5) (From Modern Poetry in Translation email) Roman Women Poets We are delighted to present this new digital pamphlet, Romanian Women Poets, curated by Cătălina Stanislav with Sam Riviere, our two Writers in Residence for 2021. ​ This residency is generously supported by the European Cultural Foundation. ​ See ROMANIAN WOMEN POETS - Modern Poetry in Translation ​ ​​ ​ 6) (From The Guardian website) ​​ A Pandemic Poem: Where Did the World Go? ​ ​“There was a world once, but where did it go?” With the richer countries perhaps approaching at least the beginning of the end of the pandemic, it’s time to take stock. This affecting film combines the words of the poet laureate, Simon Armitage, with personal stories ranging from the uplifting to the tragic, to explore the deeply disturbing and utterly strange experience we have all recently undergone. An emotional roadmap of Covid-19 rather than a linear narrative, and all the better for it. Phil Harrison. ​ ​Now available at: BBC Two - A Pandemic Poem: Where Did the World Go? ​​ ​​ 7) (From Poem Analysis email) Latest Poem Analysis website: After Making Love We Hear Footsteps - Poem Analysis ​ The site is advert heavy, but it is free and offers interesting analysis of poems worth reading. ​ ​ ​ 8) (From Faber Website) ​ Faber Members Four Worlds poetry film featuring readings from Natalie Diaz, Barbara Kingsolver, Rowan Ricardo Phillips and Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe. Lavinia Singer (Faber Editor, Poetry) introduces four vibrant and vital voices 2020 and 2021. Listen as the poets read from and contextualise their collections in this forty-minute film, created exclusively for Faber Members. ​ See Faber Members: Four Worlds Poetry Film | Faber ​ 9) (From PEN Transmissions website) ​ Noʻu Revilla, Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian), on the power of ecopoetry ​ "Dunya Mikhail argues: ‘Poetry is not medicine; it’s an X-ray’. During the spring semester, I tested Mikhail’s argument with 25 undergraduate students, who, faced with Covid-19 and the shift to online learning with its despairing isolation, decided to enroll in a creative writing course. During our unit on ecopoetry, we explored how poems can help us as individuals and writing communities to speak back to global crises like climate change.' " ​ See the resulting work at: EROSION, A6: Notes on the Waikīkī Blackout Poetry Project – PEN Transmissions ​ ​ ​ 10) (From The Guardian website) ​ Carol Rumens' Poem of the Week ​ A faultlessly consistent article in a national newspaper, and always available online, too. See Poem of the week: Pool by Rowan Williams | Poetry | The Guardian ​ ​ ​ ​ 11) (From Literary Hub email) ​ Abdulrazak Gurnah delivered his Nobel Prize lec ture in literature on 7 December 2021. See Abdulrazak Gurnah - Nobel Prize lecture 12) (From Poetry Birmingham tweet) ​ PBLJ 7 Has Set Sail 'The issue is now live on our website with more free content than ever for you to read. Do check out our website to find out more & order a copy for Christmas.' ​ Go to Poetry Birmingham ​ ​ 13) (From Ian McMillan Tweet) ​ The Christmas Dinner Verb ​ Ian McMillan's guests, John Hegley, Carol Ann Duffy, Kathryn Williams, and Jay Rayner join our virtual audience in a literary Christmas dinner - revelling in the poetry, prose and linguistic satisfaction of Christmas food, in lyrics, recipes and in poetry. ​ John Hegley gives us the taste of a French Christmas and of thick skinned roast potatoes, Kathryn Williams and Carol Ann Duffy present brand new Christmas songs from their new album 'Midnight Chorus', Jay Rayner gives us Yule commandments (including the advice that gravy solves everything, and more controversially 'don't serve Christmas pudding'). Ian McMillan channels the New York poet Frank O'Hara t o write a special Christmas poem (featuring tangerines and the mystic Julian of Norwich). As usual, Radio 3’s cabaret of the word is stuffed full of language play. Come and warm your hands at The Verb’s fire – the words are sparkling! ​ See : BBC Radio 3 - The Verb, The Christmas Dinner Verb ​ ​ 14) (From onehandclapping Tweet) ​ ONE HAND CLAPPING CHRISTMAS ISSUE Available Online ​ Features with David Harsent, Fran Lock, Toni Visconti, Billy Bragg and lots more poetry, make this worth a minute or two of anybody's time. ​ See CHRISTMAS ISSUE | onehandclapping (1handclapping.online)

Today's reading: The Rialto no.95, pp46-064. (The Rialto 95 Completed.) The title comes from Michael Mackmin's introduction and using it feels a little like being in a room with facing mirrors, as he says the expression was said by an elderly Tai Chi master, explaining a pile of defeated opponents. Mackmin uses the expression to describe his approach to Lockdown, and here am I using it to explain my approach to reading more poetry. The image reflects towards infinity in ever reducing amounts. Or should I be using a Russian doll analogy? Is someone going to take my use of the phrase to surround a nub of an idea they have, just as my idea was within Michael Mackmin's use and his within the elderly Tai Chi master's? Well given my readership reach, this is possibly the small one in the middle anyway, so let's leave that there. The Rialto is my favourite poetry magazine (I stress that I say this about all the magazines I subscribe to) because its format is to solely hand over to the poetry. It has no reviews or interviews, no articles or distractions, just 64 pages (excluding the cover, which football programmes do not exclude) of poem after poem. What I love even more is the amount of space given to each poem. Large A4 pages of beautiful, high quality white paper with a single poem on it. Well there is a little doubling up if the poems are very short, but always there is plenty of SPACE for the poem to express itself. Jim McElroy's poem, 'Coal Hole' for instance has all 36 lines in one place, no turning of pages, so that the ending, 'The night's clock ticks time on the mantle', is able to not only allude to the passing of time, both before and after the poem, but can do this with the emphasis that there is no more to come from the poet, it must all happen in your own mind. I chose to read this magazine next because I am struggling to find time for poetry reading right now as I aim to give the website a more meaningful appearance. The website (www.bobandpoetry.com) is only 6 weeks old from conception to this moment now after all. I fear I have created my own in-built non-poetry reading distraction, without realising that was what my mind all along! Double that for poetry writing. Nothing has been written since the day the site and the blog began. Hopefully 'it will all come out in the wash', as my patients used to say to me. (I wonder if I ever said anything helpful to them?) So, The Rialto is the perfect magazine for getting you right back in there. No toes dangling over the edge, one tiny run up and in you plunge. It's my preferred approach to swimming pools; it is my preferred approach to poetry reading. There is only the barest description of the poets in their biographies, but I can see that they all have much more in print than me, and are immensely better qualified to be in print with their poetry, yet I read this magazine feeling this is a level I could aspire to, so in that sense it is very encouraging. Me on a very good day maybe, and that day may still be in the future yet! My favourite poem today was 'a ruru named Murray, who I've been trying to write about since January', by Paula Harris, which after all I have said is on two pages, but as the pages are facing, nothing is lost. The tale concerns a ruru, which we are told in the poem is a morepork, though I still had to Google this word to find out a morepork is a Tasmanian spotted owl, and in the pictures looks essentially like what you would call 'an owl'. The poem is written over 12 verses, is playful, has a comedic use of idea repetition, and follows the ruru from its discovery abandoned as a baby in a bush to its letting loose by Kirsty's brother and, like the poem 'Cole Hole' I mention above, ends with an ending that alludes to a future time wondering where the ruru is now. Along the way the poem plays with ideas, that orbit around finding the baby bird, naming it (Murray), feeding it, looking after it, discovering more about it, and finally deciding that Murray is an Egyptian god, that needs setting free. "4. it fascinates me that ruru were named after the sound of their call but in English we called them morepork and claimed this was the sound of their call the sounds ruru and morepork don't sound anything alike is the bird talking to us in two different languages?" Just like poetry, I thought. We humans bring ourselves to a poem and interpret it in our own sound. I read this poem at pretty much face value, of a significant moment in time. It's a story, with a beginning middle and end, and the memory of Murray, who made its own impact in the life of the poem's protagonist (and obviously we always think this is the poet themselves). Now that the bird is gone, the poem tries to hold on to the special place Murray had. Murray lives on for ever within the poem, or at least the memory of Murray does, even if we do not in fact know what ever happened to the bird itself. Listen I have run out of time. I spent so much time scouring the biographies looking for leads to links I could use on the webpage, that this abrupt end can be a tribute to that time lost to poetry writing itself. Let it be a reminder to me that the poetry must always come first and the blog and website second. This is early days, future strategies must be put in place to protect the original hope, to get better at writing poetry. If you have any thoughts on this do please write them to me, I am always open to listening to others ideas, and it's no fun writing in isolation. see The Rialto - the poetry magazine to read and kia ora Paula, see: https://twitter.com/paulaoffkilter https://www.facebook.com/paulaharrispoet/ https://www.instagram.com/paulaharris_poet/ http://paulaharris.co.nz/ Soundtrack : 'I Dope Fiend' cassette. See Thee Objects on Music | Thee Objects (bandcamp.com)

A review of today's reading 'Memorial. An Excavation of the Iliad' by Alice Oswald pp 57-84 (end). Faber and Faber, 2011. I am in the process of re-reading my Poetry Review magazines from 2009 onwards, this book was reviewed and I remembered I had a copy (sorry Alice) bought from a cheap new-book shop in Ilkley, so it seemed a good time to finally read it. I am very pleased I did. The book reads a little like a Michael Bay film, cutting out all the boring bits and getting straight to the point. All the bangs and crashes, blood, guts and gore. Blood everywhere, and often no dull backstory. I remember the old war films I watched with my Dad, 'Tora, Tora, Tora', 'The Longest Day', 'The Dam Busters', where you have to sit through all the tedious build up before you finally get the action. Well this is book cuts out all the boring bits (I am joking) of The Iliad and just concentrates on the bits where people get killed. It is stark reading. The book opens exactly as a war memorial. Like standing in Ypres looking at the chiselled role call of the dead. Seven and half pages of names, some unreadable. (I believe I skipped this bit.) Then the book starts with a breakdown of how each person dies, when this isn't clear, there is just the name. It is very powerful. This said, presumably when The Iliad does give a method of death Oswald reports it. The scenarios have a sense of being a mini-parable, the very blood curdling, gruesome kind, that Jesus tended to avoid. These tales often get repeated word for word in a second verse that reemphasises the verse before. It's a great device for those of us with a wandering mind, if you drift, you get a second chance straight away. These tales often get repeated word for word in a second verse that reemphasises the verse before. It's a great device for those of us with a wandering mind, if you drift, you get a second chance straight away. It is very powerful. Memorial truly touches on the universality of war. Soldiers missing their wives back home. Father's missing their sons. People with previous reputation pointlessly killed. Mothers traumatised by their loss. 'Laothoë ... Never saw her son again he was washed away Now she can't look at the sea she can't think about The bits unburied being eaten by fishes...' Some men have extravagant details of their terrible demise, others just a a simple line. The short story emphasises the larger one. It is very powerful. 'EUPHORBAS died Leaving his silver hairclip on the battlefield' (...) 'And TROS begging for his life But his life was over' Then just as we get to the end before Hector is killed a motorbike is mentioned, though in my head, largely due to the Ancient Greek names, I had not thought of this as having been set in the present however modern the story of death in Wars can be. Hector despatched, the book ends on a series of epigraph-like poems, a whole page given over to a short verse, some just two lines long. These come as such a contrast to the book preceding it. They are a series of isolated metaphors, all commencing with the word 'Like...' 'Like leaves, who could write a history of leaves The wind blows their ghosts to the ground And the spring breathes new leaf in to the woods Thousands of names thousands of leaves When you remember them remember this Dead bodies are their linage Which matter no more than the leaves' It is very powerful. Not till writing this review did I notice the absence of punctuation, surprisingly this does not make the poem difficult to navigate in the slightest. Each line begins with a traditional poet's capital letter, and every name is spelt in capitals. Simple rules. Hence, the book has X-rated violence, but is a straight forward read. It shows war was as brutal in the days of the gods and heroes as it is today, and will for evermore be so. See Faber and Faber Also see Professor of Poetry | Faculty of English (ox.ac.uk) Soundtrack for writing the review: 'The German Ocean' by 'The German Ocean. SubmarineBroadcastingCompany.com

A review of Reach Poetry issue 266 This is the first Reach Poetry magazine I have read, so in that sense I suppose this is a review of not just this edition but Reach Poetry in general. The first thing I will say that even though I ordered it a while ago now, I remember how friendly the purchase was. Very welcoming and inviting, and that is the whole ethos of Indigo Dream Publishers, who produce it and the two siblings Sarasvati and The Dawntreader. I gather Indigo Dream Dreams is Ronnie Goodyear and Dawn Bauling, and in compiling the Bobandpoetry.com website their names and magazines kept popping up in the best of ways. This magazine insists that Dawn Bawling did not use to embrace social media, but they are not only very easy to find online in general, but also not one of those sites where you have to bash away the adverts which almost hold you to ransom before you dare to leave. So to the magazine itself. Nearly all the magazines I subscribe to (and this isn't one yet, but I am contemplating it) I call my favourite magazine, they all have something unique to them, which is to say, something I most admire for the most. For Reach Poetry it is that feeling that you are not just a reader of the magazine but a part of its club. You are encouraged to send in two poems, and once you have read the magazine you are further encouraged to vote on the poems in it, so that they can compile a top four reader's favourites. The prize - a decreasing number of free issues towards your subscription, presuming you are subscribed. (Well the winner gets £25 cash as if the honour of being first was not enough.) What a neatly compact idea. More than this, I would say that Reach Poetry most closely feels like being a part of a poetry reading group of any publication I have read yet. Not just because of the friendliness, the sense of community , and the encouragement to write, but for the poetry on offer, too. The poets here turn up give you their poem, and sit down knowing that the others will admire them for their efforts. I don't know who edits the poems, though I suspect it must be Ronnie and Dawn, and they have very good tastes. What I notice is absent is the list of what prizes everybody won, and for which University they are the Professor of English for. One of biggest collective downsides of the larger publications is the almost desperate need to insist a poem must be good because the pedigree of the writer is good. Well as most of the poets are giving each other the prizes they are all eventually bound to end up with one. This is not to deny that the prizewinning authors are not the best, they are, and I hold them in awe, but how wonderful to have a monthly magazine where this does not matter. I will not dodge the question. Is the standard of poetry as high as, say, The Poetry Review ? Well of course it depends on your criteria. I had fewer moments of barely fathoming how anyone could write a poem that astonishingly powerful, but then I had absolutely zero moments of thinking, 'well what the bloody hell was that all about?', either. It's a big World and there is a lot of room for all poetry that one can imagine and even that which people have not imagined yet, but I honestly believe The Poetry Review would be a stronger magazine for having a section where you could see the best of the poems that you would hear in a poetry group, and here there is a magazine stuffed with them. For what it is worth, for me ,The North is a magazine which gets this balance perfectly right. So I will play the game. Which were my favourite three poems? ' Four Part Setting' Gillian Henchley was my first place. Six verses of ABA and a seventh ABAA, from which this review gets its title. (Leaves a gap for someone to fill in what type of form this poem is!) The way the poem returned to the same phrases again and again, felt like a piece of music where a melody is revived. It read like I was listening to a string quartet. Well maybe a string quartet playing musical chairs, as slowly the number of players disappears. There does appear to be some fighting for position going on throughout. The great thing about poetry groups is you get the setting of exactly what the poem is referring to, and I do not have that here but it is intriguing. Next up by the tiniest of margins I put 'Unspoken' by Chrys Salt. Last year my father died and I wrote a poem in which end of life 'practicalities' were a metaphor for love and loss. This poem was very much more concise and readable than mine, I will try to not be jealous. It's the opening verse I liked it took me straight in before I knew precisely where we were going. 'Her lips would hover over syllables, flicker over words like moths pale presences, just visible. then in the evening shadow, lost.' The poem covers the frustration of their mother not saying words of love to her children, witnessing their mother die, then reading a letter in which their mother finally lets known her feelings. It's so hard picking a third, thus immediately making everyone else at least only fourth. I should just say I only read the magazine once, perhaps several re-readings would have brought to the fore a poem I accidentally skipped because the CD needed changing half way through. 'Lunch' Clair Chilvers . I believe I enjoyed it because it perfectly captures a moment like a short story. Simply that, I was there in the moment imagining the scene. I cannot believe it was not a real moment at the end due to the authenticity of the final verse. 'From a white china bowl, he fills my daughter's hands with wild strawberries.' Not in my top three (sorry!) but the poem I reacted to the most to was 'Forming Hurricanes' Wendy Webb, whose 'sestina with variations', did make me laugh. (It was meant to.) It had the killer last verse: 'The crane is dead: I'm not insane, to mourn it where it is in Swanwick shire. Please kiss my parse: this (free verse rhyming) sestina is nice.' Are we allowed to use 'nice' in a poem? Well Wendy Webb just did, excellent. See indigodreams.co.uk Soundtrack (To reading the magazine and writing the blog.) 1) TV On The Radio 'Return To Cookie Mountain' - more Brian Eno connection. 2) 'The Hunger' Original Soundtrack - David Bowie connection. 3) A first, an entirely classical music CD, but resolutely non-high brow. ' French Discoveries: musical treasures revealed'. Classic FM Magazine no.80. It was 33.3 (recurring) p from a charity shop!

This is a review of: Launching MPT (Modern Poetry in Translation) 'Clean Hands: Focus on the Pandemic in Europe'. Go to the MPT YouTube Channel . Getting the website (bobandpoetry.com) up, and running in a readable, presentable way, has been an experience, mostly an enjoyable one, but it has taken me away from my books and magazines in an unhealthy way. The knock on effect, though, has been to spend more time listening to poetry radio programmes, and watching poetry films / and launches. I wonder how many of us poetry lovers do this? All of us, only some of us, almost none? The viewing figures look grim, though I am never certain how accurate a refection this is of the truth. Time is an issue. Today's review covers a magazine launch, which is an hour long. Less than a film, more than an episode of EastEnders (though I like to think EastEnders drains your soul of time, and poetry launches replenish it - yes, I am judgemental in that way). How many of us allow ourselves that hour to watch? What do we have to sacrifice to watch it - poetry reading time, writing time? Probably not regular tv watching time. It may be different if we were attending the launch, there is that feeling of 'live event', just watching a recording of that event does feel like a different experience. Yet, this was truly one of my favourite hours this week. It was so rich with information and cultural significance, and presented in a way unique to its form. The MPT magazine has the theme of 'Pandemic', and it should not go unnoticed that this format of magazine launch is a direct result of the pandemic. The Zoom launch, created out of necessity because we couldn't all meet up in person, has opened the door for all the World to attend, I remain a little disappointed that not all the World does. Will this manner of launch survive the 'Pandemic Years'? We do not know yet. We all thought we would abandon our noisy, carbon-unfriendly vehicles and enjoy the returned sounds of birds twittering when and where we could, but the moment the restrictions were dropped the streets soon refilled with cars. Magazine editor, and one of my very favourite poets, Clare Pollard, acted as host. She introduced the poets and moved us swiftly through the shortest hour of entertainment I have experienced in a long time. I had enjoyed Clare's pandemic poetry classes earlier in the lockdown, the highly recommended, Clare's Poetry Circle, so consequently have become used to her easy style. First up was Safiye Can who read her poems in her own German, followed by a reading of the poems in English by the translator, Martin Kratz. For me this is my favourite presentation of non-English written poetry. Seeing the words in books in the original language is one step forward, hearing them is even better. How can any poet loving person interested in words and language not enjoy the flow of all these new words? There is no time to look them all up, so it's easier to just sit back and let the words wash over you. All the curious unfamiliar sibilance and rolling guttural r sounds, that I do not have in my own language. My brain initially is desperately trying to make sense of it all. There is the distraction of familiar words that swim in both waters, and also the remnants of O' Level German, where I can recognise streams of words, but cannot realistically put them into the correct order in time. Next up, and rather disappointingly at my age, my brain had to navigate all the negative humour that floods in to my head, humour being the defence mechanism my brain resorts to very quickly when under threat. Finally, I enter the calm waters of the experience, and can enjoy the uniqueness of the moment. The steady beat of the words and passion of the poet wins through in any language. The translation comes and this is a tale of being apart in the pandemic, from a person where the relationship has recently ended. The feeling of missing touch and hugs, overwhelming in separation from an ex-lover, parallel and yet in common with the hugs missed my the pandemic restrictions. The poem was written within the pandemic and was a perfect reflection of it. We were all away from someone we loved in the most unusual of ways. I am very thankful to have shared the experience with my wife, I believe we grew together. Former editor and the joyful intellect of David Constantine was up next. He translated poems from The Greek Anthology a collection of some 4,500 short Greek poems by over a hundred authors, written over many hundreds of years, many hundreds of years ago. Some of the poets are known and other names have been lost to time. Constantine translates in a way that brings his own experience to the translation, so the poem on a small god is inspired by his gardening loving father-in-law. Constantine points out that in distant times we still destructed the environment, but due to the technology, the consequences were immediate, and needed facing immediately. By the end of this section I was all for buying the Anthology. I am not sure how realistic it is that I will read 4,500 Greek epigrams, but for this 15 minutes David Constantine made me feel like it was the only sensible thing any person should do, and I admire that So on to Simone Atangana Bekono writing in Dutch translated by David Colmer. I used to listen to Dutch radio for hours, incomprehensibly, just to hear the DJs talking so much more exotically about pretty ordinary pop music in a way that the Radio One DJs of the '80s could not. This incredible sequence was written prior to the pandemic but addresses the feelings of abandonment and unfair isolation. 'I was born in a forest' the sequence opens with all the rich layers that offers us. It felt like a story of being lost in the experience of life, where sometimes there is drawing towards death on the rails and high buildings, 'all black people identify with abandoned people'. Black Lives Matters was the other major issue of the pandemic, and this poem chimed with this. I felt the pressure of this Earthly experience, and was exhausted. There was little hope on offer other than the power of the emotional experience, which had been captured in word, and translated into the English for me to hear it. I often wonder why poets are constantly asked to explain their writing process; when I was a child I thought the main purpose of a poet was to express and interpret the otherwise inexpressible, so it was very interesting for me to hear poets precisely in this mode in the final questions, talking about writing within the pandemic. I enjoyed how the extra ideas the poets offered gave further insights into the poems we heard. Just a wonderful hour and really I should watch it again, and maybe again, as there is no way you can pick up every nuance of every poem in one listen. So does a one hour presentation necessitate a three hour experience? No, live in the moment, enjoy it as it was immediately enjoyed. This is my rather non-academic approach (i.e. students ignore what I say). I realise that I interpret the poems to an extent based on my own experience, and the poets are not polemists. What I probably now need to do is get the magazine. I urge you to watch the launch and do the same! To get the magazine go to https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/ Soundtrack I am a big Brian Eno fan, which is my excuse for listening to U2 today. This was written to the 30 year 2 cd disc anniversary edition of 'The Joshua Tree', which I bought recently.

(Quote form the magazine introduction.) Magma Poetry 78: 'Collaborations' 16 April 2021 pp 1-25, 17 April 2021 pp 26-41 & 69-72 Collaborations in poetry? The whole concept of this was quiet alien to me, for what more solitary pursuit can there be than writing poetry? It is surprising what prejudices came tumbling out of me. Surely there was a dominant leader of the poem who was the real writer and the other/s just went along with that person's decisions? Surely the collaborators just talked themselves into liking what they had written in a collective delusional, over-optimistic mutual agreement club - when actually it was awful? Surely one person was just trying to get the other person to like them and is either 1) showing off, or 2) bigging up the other's contribution? Where did all that come from? Obviously I had not seen the idea before and it was challenging my pre-conceptions as every new idea should. Holding on to my prejudices I even felt a little short changed that I did not always know which poet wrote which bit of poetry; I wanted to know this all of a sudden, even though I had no previous knowledge off the poets, and surely, in a collaboration, the point was it didn't matter. 'It doesn't matter ??? Tell that to Paul McCartney', I thought. Then realised I was being an idiot and started enjoying the poetry. The turning point (and not to take away from the earlier poems) was 'knee to knee' by Elvrie Roberts & Rachel Goodman, which (and I am helped out with the description here) examined 'the grammar of being a woman'. There are after all two knees, and they work best when they work together. 'we are two knees (knee shape) as grain in rock (knee shape) we write' I don't know how to recreate the knee shape on my keyboard - its like a broad upside down 'U'. I ended up Googling 'lagidj gig languga' it didn't even Googlewhack! Excellent. It is a very playful, serious, and inventive poem, that pulled me out of grumpiness about the form. The foreboding atmosphere of 'Un diálogo con Lorca' by Karen Poopy and Octavio Quintanilla with its use of interpretation of translation and retranslation was offset a little for me (being a man of my age) by thoughts of how Nana Mouskouri used to create deeper meanings to her songs by offering translations as she went, does that mean I find it cheesy? Maybe it is a form of presentation I have seen parodied too many times to take it as seriously as intended. My absolute favourite of the two days bunch was 'DOAST FRIEND' where Prabhu S Guptara & Jonathan Kay write in a picture poem using words in their own Kauravi and Lancashire dialects. Having first seen the Kauravi, I didn't notice the Lancastrian was English, which was quite a surprise. The poem would look good framed on the wall! The words themselves offer brief insights into the nature of friendship. Magma 78 is the magazine where I first discovered Steven J Fowler (see stevenjfowler.com ), too, even though I see he is in fact all over the internet. I liked what he had to say about poetry, that it is an 'incredible artform', that takes you places literally and metaphorically. I agree that I find poetry, for all its depths and different interpretations, serves its own ends. It is an expression of ourselves for expression's sake not for advancement, or earning money. I think I have just said those bits, not SJ Fowler, but it was reading the article on him that made me think this way. I enjoyed seeing him reading his poems on YouTube. Have a look at SJ Fowler - Come and See the Songs of Strange Days on YouTube , which is enlight-light-lightening. Whenever I read poetry in magazines I usually nip to the end and read a review article or two as well, so that when I actually reach that place in the magazine I don't have to read lots of reviews in a row - another tip I offer you for free! Haha! In the reviews, I did enjoy seeing Andree Bagoo describe something as, 'Swiftian - Jonathan not Taylor!' Some words from today's reading... gelid - a literary word meaning 'icy, extremely cold' (and nothing to do with eels.) hagiography - the writing of the lives of saints, (and thus) a biography that treats its subjects with undue reverence. I put words like this on index cards so I don't forget them, and now I am online I am posting a picture of these cards on Instagram! See Bob and Poetry Instagram Also see Welcome to Magma Poetry - Magma Poetry and Collaborations Magma 78 - Magma Poetry Today's Soundtrack: Submarine Broadcasting co. bandcamp.com/ I saw their advert in Electronic Sound Magazine No.75, and was immediately hooked on their content. I specifically listened to: - 'The Town That Was Murdered' by Draaier - 'Close from The German Ocean' by The German Ocean - 'Music for end of year lists' by residual energy boss / hyacinth featured track: gods hands pt. XII - 'Clear Muted Sine Recovery' by Sunplus (and after I subscribed...) - 'The Hozro Sessions' by Iyari

14 April 2021 'Contains Mild Peril' Fran Lock pp83-84. The final part of the book is given over to a single poem 'dead / sea', a ten part 16 page poem, in which there is dark undertones of death, self harm, illness, drugs (maybe) and life out of control. Every time I read Fran Lock (and if I had started the website earlier this would be post 10) I experience something different, and this time there was a strong feeling of the flow of words experienced in mania. I am a reader not an academic and I have been given no outward clue of what is going on, so my mind aims to order it and make sense of it from a world I know about (though not experienced myself first hand). The constant stream of words and profound insights with occasional allusions to the subject's father, has that feeling of a person experiencing a manic episode. A person experiencing this may throw out words that don't have an obvious order or connection, but because one's own mind as the listener does not allow disorder, it starts to fill in the gaps and make sense of the words into a logical narrative. The poem does not have a beginning, middle, or end, of note. Though the darkness of the flow veers away from death, and seems to wake up on a ward, there is no big reveal at the end , where all the experience is summarised neatly in a box so that one is happy that was the subject of the poem, we now know what the rest of it has all been about, and that the subject of the poem themselves is all right. From the poem's title, which sets the scene, 'dead' - well there is is a constant undercurrent of death all around, maybe someone important has died, and this brings up the death or absence of the father, and the person themselves experiences the dead person as a dead person amongst the living, and contemplates causing their own death, or is in the presence of a person attempting to kill themselves (perhaps on the ward the subject of the poem may be on) or the person who tied killed themselves. Or maybe not. And 'Sea' - makes me think of being all out at sea, lost in an ocean of feelings, drowning not waving. And the Dead Sea is a place people go for therapy, where one can float to the surface without moving. Perhaps the person is in a hospital receiving help, there is certainly unwell people nearby. This is all wild speculation, but it does not matter, this is the feelings it brings out in me; that sense of making sense of the nonsensical, that the subject of the poem appears to be experiencing. Sometimes words appear in italics which I took to mean were real words someone was saying, or at least someone is hearing, and the words connecting the words in italics seem to be the response the subject of the poem is having to the words. Along the way there are wonderful phrases, which a regular narrative could never find, ''like a battered wife. beatific pesticide'. There is frequent word association, which is a symptom of manic thinking, and also which naturally work well in a poem. Meaning seems to hold together for several words them fade into another subject without understanding the twist, which has the feel of delirium, if not mania. ' there is a darkness we can neither stand against or swim. i searched for you. i searched and searched. death, an unmappable excess, distortion of geography. i tore my hair on building sites, listing in the shipwrecked kitchenettes of unplumbed houses. it was cold. the wind got in between my ribs.' (michaél / osiris) ... I don't want to end this quote, it all flows on so relentlessly well, creating an atmosphere, with feelings of sadness, loss, self destruction, or being out of control being, near and around death, in chaos, unable to help oneself from harm, living on the edge of despair, in squat conditions, possibly around substance misuse - whilst actually saying none of those things explicitly. btw - Osiris is the god of fertility, agriculture, the afterlife, the dead, resurrection, life, and vegetation in ancient Egyptian religion. Michael is an archangel, of course, but I am not sure if that is the Michael we mean here. And this is one tiny passage within a huge, endless flows of words, where every few words can be interpreted, or reinterpreted or left as they are, I truly love it. Mainly because I could never reproduce this, it is beyond any capability I have to reproduce it, much as Tennyson or Wordsworth is beyond my reach of ability (and understanding too sometimes!) So it is with some sadness that this book comes to an end without an obvious place for me to go for the next book. Re-reading may well be the order of the day. Should I want a further break from my ordered thinking, a time for my neural pathways to be temporarily wiped clean I know where to come to and I surely will. See Contains Mild Peril - Fran Lock — Out-Spoken (outspokenldn.com) Soundtrack: - reading the poetry the music was 'Invisible Cities' by A Winged Victory for the Sullen; and writing the blog it was 'Auntie Aubrey's Excursions Beyond the Call of Duty, Pt.3 (The Orb Remix Project) by Various Artists (who have had their music remixed by The Orb).

'Shakespeare For Every Day of the Year' edited by Allie Esiri MacMillan 2019 pp 146-159 So with the website to create and update, I had fallen considerably behind in the daily Shakespeare read. I mentioned in an earlier blog that I have my daily read books, whose main purpose is to get me started that day, and what better for the soul than a daily dose of Shakespeare? And yes, on the odd day, when the mind is not fully engaged, the Shakespeare seems pretty indecipherable, and when that happens I find it can be best just to let it go, and tell yourself there is always tomorrow. Or sometimes I do face it head on and do further research to understand the passage more. Personally I always do this when it is a sonnet, as I have the excellent Don Paterson book 'Reading Shakespeare's Sonnets' (Faber and Faber 2010), which with its down to earth chatty style, suitable for the non academic or academic alike. It entirely picks out the sonnet's meaning and offers alternative interpretations made popular down the years. 'Shakespeare For Every Day of the Year' is a wonderful book. Each passage is introduced by Allie Esiri, and if the Shakespeare itself goes over your head, then at least this bit will not. It often offers some kind of justification for the particular passage being made available on that day and throws in facts about Shakespeare and his times, that appeals to the casual historian in me, as much as the poetry lover. The passages themselves come from all of Shakespeare's oeuvre, the plays, the poems, and the sonnets, and cover all the famous moments as well as the obscure. Today I read pieces from the poem 'The Rape of Lucrece', the slightly more obscure play, 'Timon of Athens', and the very popular funny banter between Hal and Falstaff from 'Henry IV, Part 1'. I learned (or was reminded at least) that Falstaff was probably originally played by Will Kemp, Henry IV was born Henry Bolingbroke, and that Phillip Faulconbridge, Bastard, (from King John) is the fourth largest part in Shakespeare's canon ! Most days I do only have the one passage to read, but falling behind is no big deal, as it is always wonderful to immerse myself in Shakespeare occasionally. This bite size presentation of his work is perfect for me. I work on the principle that if I read it once, I put down one layer of understanding ready for when I read it again, and when I do then read it again I will understand it better, and put down a second layer of understanding. I envy actors who learn a role from the inside out, learning every aspect of the meaning and possible meaning to a point where they can even offer their own interpretation. Such luxury isn't available for all of us who need to short cut to being offered other people's ideas, but I have found that eventually, if I watch or read plays often enough, as I have 'Macbeth', 'The Tempest', and 'A Midsummer's Night Dream', new doors of understanding finally do open! Apologies if I am preaching to the converted. This book is a great gateway to the Shakespeare drug, or a great way of taking two minutes out of the day if you are already a convert. Today's favourite piece... From 'Sonnet 3' (on p.150, or April 6th). 'Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee Calls back the lovely April of her prime: So thou through windows of thine age shall see Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time. But if thou live, remember'd not to be, Die single, and thine image dies with thee.' The quote that is the title of the piece is King Henry V, no longer the youthful and fun loving Hal, but the King with kingly responsibilities spurning Falstaff once and for all in 'Henry IV, Part 2' (on p. 154, or April 9th). Today's Soundtrack: Up to now all the blog posts have been done in silence, which is unusual. When I write what I was listening to when reading the poetry, or writing the blog, I call it my 'soundtrack'. Today it was the latest in the series of LateNightTales', by Jordan Rakei, which actually only arrived on CD today. To trumpet its arrival I did also listen to the last two releases by Hot Chip and Khruangbin. I am not 100% sure when the poetry reading actually began, but I definitely played the Jordan Rakei CD twice!

9th April 'Contains Mild Peril ' Fran Lock pp 76-82 Fran Lock's 'Contains Mild Peril'. Prior to starting the website I was reading this daily and had already reached p77, which is the second part of the book - an extended single poem. I am devouring Fran Lock books right now. I have read 'Dogtooth', followed by 'The Mystic and The Pig' in quick succession, and may have to go back to the beginning when this book is finished. 'The Mystic and the Pig' did have a strong narrative, but usually the poems feel like a bunch of words that sum up a subject, which have been cut up, put in a bag, and pulled out in an organised random order. It is really worth reading, mantra like, chunks at a time, as it has a feeling of neural reprogramming. It both flushes away your regular thoughts, and inspires fresh new ones, especially useful if you are planning to do some writing that day. There is often a theme of a traveller's life, and she is especially good at describing dangerous men, but really any subject is up for grabs. Occasionally the free flow of words bump into each other so we see some good old familiar alliteration and assonance, but one is never quite sure if this is deliberate or coincidental. It's like a kind of surreal rap. I love it. 'pit bulls , shit schools, cripple-lipped buskers slurring into their sinatra, driveways pubescent with weeds, cars on bricks, yeah, imagine, our cousin says sarcastically, how could he stand to leave all this? not leaving, then, but leaving me.' (iii 'everything happens for a reason') Fran Lock uses loads of words I don't recognise, and given that I don't always know if they will advance the understanding by looking them up, I don't, but as any one who loves words will tell you, sometimes you just cannot help yourself. It's a fine line between killing the poem dead by looking up every word (given I am not studying these poems, just reading them), and being desperate to know what an unfamiliar word means. Today I was caught by... Cumaean - definition of Cumaean by The Free Dictionary An ancient city and Greek colony of south-central Italy near present-day Naples. Founded c.750bc, it was among the earliest Greek settlements in Italy. It later featured prominently in Roman legend as the site of a cave housing a sibyl. And that's another thing. Fran Lock does not always 100 per cent use the word typically. I don't mean incorrectly, as the word is 100 per cent deliberate. But like the 'sinatra' without the capital above, some words are adopted into the cascade of words as if to have their own meaning just for that one poem! Incidentally when Alexa told me Amazon were delivering my copy of the book she announced, "You are expecting a delivery today ... 'Contains Mild Peril'. " I genuinely had no idea what she meant and wondered if we had ordered a dangerous combination of cleaning fluids. 'iv martyn / siybl' is wonderfully gothic, and has undertones of a zombie movie 'the dead will take root anywhere'. Another Fran Lock trick is to get a phrase and return you to it several times throughout the poem, which grounds it, and again has that rap feel. I often think that just I get to the point that my brain cannot take in any more language or imagery, the phrase returns so that I can reboot and start again. ... hmm I think the end of this blog will now be lost to all time, I wonder what happened to it?! Nevertheless, I won't attempt to re-create it, as I have no-idea what I went on to say! Or maybe I just never finished it and forgot, who knows? To buy the book, please see: Contains Mild Peril - Fran Lock — Out-Spoken (outspokenldn.com)

9th April 2021 'Read Me A Poem a Day for the National Year of Reading.' Chosen by Gaby Morgan, pp 278-283. OK so why is a serious reader of poetry like me reading what looks like a children's book of daily poems. Well the answer is simple and quite clever. It is my doorway into starting reading. Some days, like today, I am just itching to read my next fill of Fran Lock poetry, but often I don't know where to begin, so I have my starter daily books. I began reading this book (and the Shakespeare) on 1 November 2020, which represents the first day of my retirement (two years earlier) . Every year I task myself with doing a certain number of hours of reading and I start the clock on this day. This book has been wonderful. In today's batch there was poems by Carol Ann Duffy, Grace Nichols, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jackie Kay, Langston Hughes, sat alongside a regular Anon. I had 6 days to catch up, as I had concentrated so much on writing the brand new website! That said, it only took a few minutes. I did a lot of poetry reading and listening from 2010 to 2014 (-ish), before deciding to knock it on the head to complete my pension. I have returned to reading now I am retired. Lockdown was awful, obviously. My father died from Covid-19 in March 2020 right at the beginning of it all. On the other hand, it helped me to concentrate my mind. As there was nowhere to go, I have found a place to be by reading poetry again. During that last poetry phase (there have been many but 2010-2014 was especially enjoyable) I got to see both Carol Ann Duffy and Jackie Kay. That's the wonderful thing about poetry compared with say, football or rock music, it is still relatively easy to not only see your heroes but also to go up and have a few words of chat with them afterwards! Jackie Kay's poem here is called 'Divorce' and in the wrong hands reads as a very dark tale of divorcing your parents. I am fairly certain Jackie Kay loved her adoptive parents, so perhaps this is intended as a cathartic tale where children can agree in their anger when reading the poem before bed at night only to wake up in the morning refreshed! 'Father, your breath smells like a camel's and it gives me the hump!' Seeing the Anons in this collection I always grieve for the lost name. How sad for the person that their immortalised words have become mortally detached. Here Anon is talking about an apple... 'It's nice to think, though many an eye Has seen the ruddy skin, Mine is the very first to spy The five brown pips within.'