They didn’t kiss because
It was
The first night.
It didn’t seem right
And it was neither the time
Nor the place.
He couldn’t see her face
And being unsure
Whether he would see her more
He did capture
A passing rapture
In rhyme.
The owl and the pussycat went to sea, in a leaky, cardboard boat.
They had lost all their money
To a girl called Honey
Along with a £5 note.
The owl looked up to the stars above
And sang to a small guitar
“Oh beautiful pussy, oh pussy my love
I wonder where we are?
We are? We are?
I wonder where we are?”
With a sorrowful sigh
The pussy made reply:
“Owl,
You are a stupid old fowl!
Make no mistake
We
Are not at sea
But on a lake!
Oh what a stupid old fowl you are
You are
You are!
Oh what a stupid old fowl you are!”.
So they sailed away
For a year and a day
To the land where the bong tree grows.
And there in a wood
A stoned student stood
Blowing smoke from the end of his nose
His nose
His nose.
Blowing smoke from the end of his nose.
“Dear student are you willing
To sell for one shilling
Your pot?” Said the student, “I will”.
So they took it away
And were arrested next day
By the policeman who lives on the hill …
(A shortened version of this poem originally appeared on Ester Chilton’s blog, https://esthernewtonblog.wordpress.com).
Matthew is absolutely correct that the Amazon Kindle store is swamped with books rendering it extremely difficult for authors to get discovered. I would add that readers also face problems in finding your books, (if you are J K Rowling everyone has heard of you, however if you happen to be one amongst the millions of Ms and Mr Smiths just how, exactly do you get noticed)?
Click to buy…pleeeeeeaaasssee! (Whimper, whimper…)
You write a book. You decide to publish it yourself, spend a lot of money on cover artwork, proof-readers and so forth, and start revving up promotions on social media – blog, Twitter, various of the services and so on. It’s all carefully planned and designed to create a buzz. It takes hours of hard work.
Then the book’s released and – nothing.
A few sales trickle through. That’s it. After a while it’s sitting there at the two-millionth rank on the Amazon seller lists, and nothing you do seems to be able to shift it.
That happens to commercial publishers, too, who add Amazon Kindle to their ways of distributing and selling.
What’s going on is pretty…
View original post 302 more words
There was a young lady called Lou
Who stood in a pot of glue.
She said, with a sigh
“I don’t know why
I stood in this pot of glue!”.
There was a young man called Kirt
Who composed a poem about a skirt.
It being very protracted
I became distracted
And thought
It ought
To be short.
Ester Chilton challenges her readers to write a poem, limerick or story about shopping. You can find my contributions below together with an amusing limerick by Keith Channing.
This week’s challenge is to write a story, limerick or poem on the subject of:
Shopping
Last week’s challenge was to write about School. Here are a couple of the pieces you sent in:
Keith Channing sent this limerick in – on his birthday too!
There was a complete moratorium
On crooning in the auditorium
But only a fool
Would ban singing in school
Such a fine educational emporium.
Amy‘s is short and sweet:
School.
Because all the good cartoons aired on Saturday morning….
The end.
***
Photo credit: picmia.com
There was a young lady called Lou
Who lost a little black shoe.
When it was found under the bed
Of a vicar named Ted
It caused quite a to-do …
The (UK) Poetry Society are offering poets the opportunity to have their work critiqued.
There are various dates available in July and August.
The cost for Poetry Society members is £60 and £70 for non-members.
For further information please visit http://poetrysociety.org.uk/poetry-society-information/services/poetry-surgery/.
Life lasts
Not for ever,
Our time here is so short,
Nothing stays the same for ever,
Our minds
Are small
Defined by the box we live in
But eternity calls
Remember, we
Are dust
On 9 June, the author, Lionel Shriver, published an article in The Spectator, https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/06/when-diversity-means-uniformity/. To give a quote from that article which does, I think sum up Shriver’s argument:
“Second: dazzled by this very highest of social goods, many of our institutions have ceased to understand what they are for. Drunk on virtue, Penguin Random House no longer regards the company’s raison d’être as the acquisition and dissemination of good books. Rather, the organisation aims to mirror the percentages of minorities in the UK population with statistical precision. Thus from now until 2025, literary excellence will be secondary to ticking all those ethnicity, gender, disability, sexual preference and crap-education boxes. We can safely infer from that email that if an agent submits a manuscript written by a gay transgender Caribbean who dropped out of school at seven and powers around town on a mobility scooter, it will be published, whether or not said manuscript is an incoherent, tedious, meandering and insensible pile of mixed-paper recycling”.
Shriver has received a good deal of criticism. However, as a disabled (blind) poet I have some sympathy with the argument she makes (although I wouldn’t have expressed my views as Shriver does).
I wish to be judged on the merits of my poetry and not given preferencial treatment due to the fact that I am registered as being disabled. Having said that, I welcome initiatives to encourage the participation of under represented groups in the literary scene (provided that such initiatives are not prescriptive and do not entail the employment of quotas).
Amid the overreaction to Shriver’s article, one of the more balanced responses (with which I have considerable sympathy) can be found here, https://emmalee1.wordpress.com/2018/06/20/publishing-and-diversity/.
Kevin
