This is Not the Poem I Had Hoped to Write This is not the poem I had hoped to writewhen I sat at my desk and the page was white.You see, there were other words I’d had in mind,yet this is what I leave behind. I thought it was a poem to eradicate war;one of…
language
Anniversary I forgot, I said,but since when was our love builton anything so ordinaryas a date? Let other couples mark time.I am too caught upwith the here and the now of youto waste these hoursin commemoration of the past. Because our love is vast,like an ocean,with depths far beyondothers’ comprehension. Why spend our lives…
It’s publication day for ‘How to Lay an Egg with a Horse Inside’. For those of you who preordered, I hope your copy has arrived and you enjoy reading it. For those of you who, for some strange reason, didn’t preorder, it should be out there in most bookshops for perusal and purchase. But only…
An Invention of Collective Nouns A reckoning of spreadsheets.A distraction of smartphones.A prattle of podcasts.A mispronunciation of scones. A clique of photographers.A heard of precedents.An enjambment ofpoets. A grope of presidents. A pile of haemorrhoids.A bunion of personal trainers.A bout of estimations.A condescension of mansplainers. A stroke of geniuses.A spot of adolescents.An embarrassment of Richards.A…
The Power of a Homophone “Sometimes the powerof a homophonewill just come out of nowhereand hit you –like being struckby a ten ton truck,”articulated Laurie.
On Tender Hooks Let me cut to the cheese:every time you open your mouth,I’m on tender hooks. You charge at the English languagelike a bowl in a china shop.I wish you’d nip it in the butt. On the spurt of the moment,another eggcorn tumbles out.It’s time you gave up the goat. Curve your enthusiasmand don’t…
Logomachy To say that Damianwas sesquipedalianwould be an understatement for there was no abatementin his capacity for loquacityand not one trace of temerityin his pursuitof verbal dexterity. It was precisely this pompositymixed with verbositywhich made him describeKieran Thomas as “crepuscular”. Kieran Thomas was also more muscular. Damian nursed his black eyeand hoped Kieranmight be struck…
Slow Puncture I’d use every one of them – each tiny symbol / sign –to ‘light up’ my words … and write eye-catching lines:the comma; the colon; the ellipsis; the slash;the question mark; the hyphen; the en and em dash. In stanzas 1-2, it was all there on show(Was there nothing not used? The short…
The totally ace online booksellers BookKind have chosen ‘How to Lay an Egg with a Horse Inside’ as their Non-Fiction Book of the Month for April. This is doubly good news because every copy sold via BookKind raises money for charity – just select from a range of charitable organisations when you order: https://bookkind.co.uk/book-of-the-month-home/ In…
And Now for the Weather Today is set to be agreeably alliterative across an assortment of areas although the occasional metaphor may cause some faces to cloud. Idioms will be coming down like stair rods in northern regions, while the south may experience the odd outbreak of similes, like an unexpected shower of arrows. In coastal, littoral, and…