An important message Hasmukh. I truly hope the ruling does help to protect women in India.

Comment is about Thank you, Prime minister (blog)

Original item by Hasmukh Mehta

A little hill behind my house, covered in woodland. Just heading up there now to commune with some friendly trees. They never chat, they just be. Gorgeous language - some of that 'prattle must have it's uses.

Comment is about Far from this place (blog)

Original item by Martin Elder

some great lines in this piece Martin and like Brian you had me thinking of my favourite hills to escape to. Truleigh Hill above Shoreham was always a favourite as a kid and later we would take the bus and some cans of beer up to Devils Dyke above Brighton. I'm sure you remember that one. It seems we're all searching for silence in this cacophonous world. All the best, Col.

Comment is about Far from this place (blog)

Original item by Martin Elder

Thank you Martin. I appreciate you taking the time to comment on my poem and I'm glad that you found it to be about determination, rather than futility.

Comment is about Dear Sadness, (blog)

Original item by April Tredinnick

Great imagery. Left me feeling very 'Monday morning '.

Comment is about INCOMING...onlookers regrouping at the summit (blog)

Original item by nunya

You and most of the population John. The Royals do though as they seem to have timed the Duchess of Cambridge well.

Comment is about ST. GEORGE'S DAY APRIL 23RD 2018 (blog)

Original item by M.C. Newberry

I didn’t realise it was today, MC.

Comment is about ST. GEORGE'S DAY APRIL 23RD 2018 (blog)

Original item by M.C. Newberry

Well done Hugh. Nice to see a humorous piece being recognised.

Comment is about ‘The Unlucky Vicar’ by Hugh is Write Out Loud’s Poem of the Week (article)

Original item by steve pottinger

Thank you Martin, your comments are very much appreciated. Especially the creative fashion bit. Thank you Pat,Binte and Anya for the likes.


All the best Des

Comment is about Within the wind (blog)

Original item by DESMOND CHILDS

A lot of emotion behind this, but an even better take on the subject. Well done.

Comment is about Poets (blog)

Original item by AbSo2021

True words indeed.

Comment is about No need to fear (blog)

Original item by Hasmukh Mehta

Thank you Desmond - no, never. ?

Thank you Martin - good to hear from you again. ?

Comment is about 'Epitaph for Gregory O'Donoghue' by Frances Macaulay Forde is Write Out Loud's Poem of the Week (article)

Original item by Greg Freeman

Your writings have reminded me much of the heartbreaking headlines I've read and this movie that I saw...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97Z54yo7l9g

I see that this is an issue close to you and I am glad to see such perspectives opened up to the world through a military man.

Rachel

Comment is about Hasmukh Mehta (poet profile)

Original item by Hasmukh Mehta

Words sent crashing upon one another--inspired.

The sensitivity of a porcupine making love? Excruciating and so funny.

Very thoughtful, Martin--we must never become enamored with our own self-comforting. As necessary as it may be in times of distress, it is a like a drug that has the ability to lull us into complete complacency. Administer with care.

Rachel

Comment is about Far from this place (blog)

Original item by Martin Elder

Thanks to everyone for reading and commenting--you're very kind. I wrote this while far away from home, contemplating how it would feel to disappear. I must admit to feeling a certain attraction, but becoming a living ghost must be unbearable at times.

Rachel x

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yeiUNEF-Mg

Comment is about timeline (blog)

Original item by nunya

Thank you Hannah for your continuing support and encouragement! This one just came to me very quickly and I am still not sure how I interpret it myself. i guess it is open to opinions whether it is about bleak despair or beautiful hope, but maybe mainly about resilience in the face of both those two impostors.
M x

Comment is about Only One Winner (blog)

Original item by mike booth

Hi Sal,

Yes, this one is a bit of an epic. Took me over a week to get right. Cannot tell you how many times I wrote and rewrote this from complete scratch; not just the usual editing re-drafting, and so on.

In the end my synapses frazzled, but this is one of the few poems I am happy with.

Thank you so much for your feedback and taking the time to read this. It really is appreciated!

Cheers,
Suki

Comment is about Arachnid Death Star Vs IKEA/ I Am Starfucker Star Child (blog)

Original item by Suki Spangles

Watcha Ray,

Gardening slap and tickle!

By the way I loved the reading and intro. Magic.

Suki

Comment is about IN THE GARDEN - AGAIN (blog)

Original item by ray pool

Hi Rachel,

Thoughtful connected imagery: no lines/frames of division. Imprint/ anchor/tethered. Escaping/Aimless/ejected. Scribbles/tattoos, etc.

The fate of such timelines..

Suki

Comment is about timeline (blog)

Original item by nunya

Hi Martin,

Hope You're well.

Just to lie still
Without a sound
Watch
Wait and listen
To the sound of nothing
But the movement of the air..

Lovely..

Suki

Comment is about Far from this place (blog)

Original item by Martin Elder

Brought a lump to my throat (think about it).

Comment is about Paradise Lost (blog)

Original item by Terry Jones

Garden poetry, a genre in itself!
Love the sexual references in V2, it really is a bit like intercourse when one is waking the soil up for the first time each year.

Spot on Ray

Comment is about IN THE GARDEN - AGAIN (blog)

Original item by ray pool

Powerful sample.

Comment is about Nathalie Sieh (poet profile)

Original item by Nathalie Sieh

Thank you all and I make electronic music. ?

Comment is about Promise (lyrics for a song I'm working on.) (blog)

Original item by Damon Blackery

Plastic Bertrand

Comment is about Plastic (blog)

Original item by Carol Falaki

The Long Mynd for me though it's some time since I've been there...could be a housing estate now.

Comment is about Far from this place (blog)

Original item by Martin Elder

ah well done Carol - I knew you had a plastic poem in you!

Graham's 'Hooligulls' has got me thinking on a slightly different tack. If it comes to anything I'll post it. Bizarrely your first line had me thinking of Tommy Steele's Water Water song and the 10" LP that I was given as a kid - one of the first I ever owned - The Tommy Steele Story.

I best stop waffling before my comment becomes longer than your poem! All the best, Col.

Comment is about Plastic (blog)

Original item by Carol Falaki

deep into words and leaves thought
thank you for sharing.

Comment is about The Mask (blog)

Original item by Georgia John

Powerful. Sadness but hope .

Hannah

Comment is about Dear Sadness, (blog)

Original item by April Tredinnick

Great atmosphere in this poem.
Enjoyed it.

Hannah

Comment is about Seven Fifteen (blog)

Original item by Edward Coleman

I haven't got a garden but I remember the family garden and the garden shed.
Special days spent in the garden, our own secret world.
Loved this one.

Hannah

Comment is about IN THE GARDEN - AGAIN (blog)

Original item by ray pool

Reminds me of my grandfather's funeral, it was the anniversary of his death on the 18th.
You hear the sounds of cars and birds, as life goes on.
Sad and true.

Hannah

Comment is about The Body of Life (blog)

Original item by mike booth

This is an amazing poem.
Read it twice. All of life is here.

Hannah

Comment is about Only One Winner (blog)

Original item by mike booth

Thank you so much for your comment Mike.

Hannah

Comment is about mike booth (poet profile)

Original item by mike booth

I agree with Martin,beautiful work.

Comment is about Seven Fifteen (blog)

Original item by Edward Coleman

You really do love your gardening it would seem Ray. But there is a lot to be said for a man and his shed Great poem mate

Comment is about IN THE GARDEN - AGAIN (blog)

Original item by ray pool

An excellent poem Rachel with a great rhythm and pace to it.
I look forward to more in the same vein.
Nice one

Comment is about timeline (blog)

Original item by nunya

Thanks a lot

Comment is about Silhouettes (blog)

Original item by Binte Afroz

When I read the first couple of lines of this poem I wasn't sure about , but then when I read the whole piece through, I realised that this is a mighty poem with a great deal of determination in the finals lines beginning with I will
Fabulous

Comment is about Dear Sadness, (blog)

Original item by April Tredinnick

As Colin says an interesting idea. I can see where you are coming from with this . It is almost like looking at clouds and identifying all sorts of interesting shapes

Comment is about Silhouettes (blog)

Original item by Binte Afroz

What a lovely little poem this is saying so much in so few lines in such a creative fashion.
Nice one

Comment is about Within the wind (blog)

Original item by DESMOND CHILDS

There are some fabulous lines here, but I particularly like
'god is falling in the rain'
wonderful stuff.

Comment is about Seven Fifteen (blog)

Original item by Edward Coleman

Good stuff. I look forward wit baited breath to the rest of the song. I am also wondering what particular style will it be blues , folk Rock? Nice one

Comment is about Promise (lyrics for a song I'm working on.) (blog)

Original item by Damon Blackery

Another superb poem Frances
I love the line
' tuna sandwiches peppered with slurred words'
wonderful and many congrats on a richly deserved POTW

Comment is about 'Epitaph for Gregory O'Donoghue' by Frances Macaulay Forde is Write Out Loud's Poem of the Week (article)

Original item by Greg Freeman

I know that men have a history of love for a garden shed
But I wonder if love evolves with the storing of a bed?

Comment is about IN THE GARDEN - AGAIN (blog)

Original item by ray pool

The reasons for excluding this poem - in which no obscene
or similar abuse is used - are not really recognisable in
a land with a history of poetical pursuit of perceived political failure and lack of proper endeavour on behalf of us all, a tradition that has its companions in the drawings of
Gillray and Hogarth, and, latterly, Steadman and Scarfe.

Comment is about DOUBLE GUFF! (blog)

Original item by M.C. Newberry

A wonderful evocation of the incredible poetry success story that is George Melling, who has hauled himself up by his poetic bootstraps in the face of challenges that would floor many of us; and has done so with a love of, and deftness with, words that have brought joy to his many appreciative audiences throughout the North West.

Comment is about I'm Having the Rhyme of My Life: George Melling, Talentvine Press (article)

Original item by Greg Freeman

“LETS DO IT” - CAM BROWN AND GREAT OPEN MIC AT APRIL WRITE ANGLE

Faces were beaming at Write Angle's April gig at The Townhouse in Petersfield. Every one of Cam's songs - from a Jake Thackray bawdy farmyard song like The Ram of Derbyshire or The Bantam Cock, or Tom Lehrer's Poisoning the Pigeons in the Park, to Trout Fishing in America's lightning fast A Proper Cup of Coffee, where the audience was asked to sing the chorus but no-one could keep up with him – was a success. It was performed at express train speed! Only Jezz, singer/guitarist, managed to stay on rail!

Cam is an accomplished performer; versatile, switching from guitar to guitar; from slow to fast to lightning; from Mighty Panther's Bedbug Song, in a West Indies accent, to Tommy Steele's What a Mouth in cockney. His repertoire ranges from old favourites like Jake Thackray's Sister Josephine to his own Tights in White Satin, with apologies to the Moody Blues. He finished with Victoria Wood's hilarious Let's Do It, rounding off a true tour de force. The man is amazing, and a great guy too, announcing he'd be donating his performance fee to the charity, 'Compassion in Dying'.

Write Angle is used to a high quality of performances at the open mike but where we'd like to encourage more poets and musicians to come along, April brought in a crowd – Cam's fans followed him from as far as Surrey – and there were 12 open mikers including three wonderful guitarists and several poets!

Mike Peach, guitarist/singer, who runs a weekly folk evening in Byfleet, performed Richard Thompson's Johnny's Far Away: “Johnny's cruising out to sea and he believes in chastity - for some”! Gillian Warren gave us her relationship with The Scarecrow, who loved the birds and hated the fact that “his cruel face scared away those he held most dear” and was so pleased when a “storm had blown away the scary features of his face”. Vivi sang and played Violetta Parra's Gracias a la vida: “Thanks to the life that has given me so much. It gave the laughter and the crying...”

Richard Hawtree, as ever, brought humour along with his clever and endless talents as performer and poet. This time it was A Better Lever about Elizabeth Iliffe, mistress and then wife of the third Earl of Egremont, having borne six children and being bored, decided to invent “an improved crossbar lever...for which she won a silver medal”. This was followed by Collider, a spring poem or maybe an anti-spring poem, inspired by the Hadron Collider! Switching from the scholastic to the whimsical – he gave us The Night I Spoke Irish in Surrey: “It was pure unadulterated Surrey Irish...I used the vocative in all the right places and the dative with archaic precision”.

Leah's Jesus the Boy talked about his youth. Did his mother spend days at the gym?” , then, No-one Understands Me - “...they say I talk too fast” - following with a quirky take-off on Jack and Jill: what was she to do when “she couldn't find any water”. Your reviewer provided The Heath Pond, about some of the strange goings on in Petersfield while Bruce Parry, nostalgic as ever, read Dream Palaces, about the cinemas of long ago: “Once there was silence with words that we read, the orchestra played and the Wurlitzer raised out of the floor”. Then a short story about a walk-in clinic waiting room. And he won the raffle prize (again!): a meal for two at Tai Tong, the superb Chinese restaurant in Petersfield.

Denys Whitley's astronomical poem, Kepler 87b, was about a planet which may have life, orbiting a distant star: “A whisper across immense time, five thousand years of light.” He brought us down to earth with Climbing on Moorne Granite, describing the rugged Irish mountains. Colin Eveleigh had everyone laughing with his Unfinished Sentences, full of unfinished lines, demonstrating how he and his wife communicate (not uncommon). In his Fly the Flume he braves the flume at the swimming pool - “Oh Boy. I'm young again!” Sue Spiers' Swans told of the competition between pen and cob for scattered bread, with her “wings arched like an angel.” Seasonally, in Ode to April, visiting the Museum of Hoaxes, Sue “learnt through time to suspend disbelief”.

In Writing, the talented Dick Senior shared memories of time spent with his granddad, telling him of the fighting in the Great War, “...and all the while above, a skylark singing, hanging on the air like memories of love.” Continuing his nostalgia, in Memory Box, he told how he and a friend ventured into the awesome Stockwood, a suburb of Bristol with a bad reputation: “...eyes snaking side to side, slinking through the pale teeth of the estate..”. Returning to the theme of spring, A Seasonal Poem Written on Valentines Day told how “Heat and light invite all living things to stretch, fire up, ignite”.

Jezz capped off the evening with virtuoso renderings of Radiohead's Don't Leave Me High and David Bowie's The Port of Amsterdam – the latter having become Jezz's signature tune.

Review is about WRITE ANGLE POETRY & MUSIC +OPEN MIC on 17 Apr 2018 (event)

Beautiful Rachel.....

Comment is about timeline (blog)

Original item by nunya

I’m plagued by bloody rabbits digging up my lawn at the minute, Ray.
I noticed for the first time this year how often I needed a breather between digging. Tempus fugit, anno domini and dominoes pizzas, I suppose.

Comment is about IN THE GARDEN - AGAIN (blog)

Original item by ray pool