WHATS BEEN HID....

DIET This is where I am right now, feeling likeI’m in some loose-limbed American poemby one of those hard-living American poets.Mentioning no names, but … those poets,who casually toss their cookiesin the car park of a roadhouse then go back inside.Who work their way through brands of mouthwashlike fresh-breath sommeliers, coming downoff the Scotch.

LEAFE PRESS Leafe Press publishes poetry, mainly of the modernist / post-modernist variety. It's a 21st century press and a digital press; it was founded in April 2000 with a launch at Nottingham Central Library and was run with digital printing and desk-top publishing software, which was still new, and which was helped by my working in the IT industry. The press is named after Leafe Close, the street I was living in at the time, and that was named after James Leafe, one of the munitions workers killed in the Chilwell explosion of 1918 who would probably be bemused that a poetry publisher was named after him.

Songs and poems from the Thames Valley Texas 'tour' supporting The Dreaming Spires launch of 'Normal Town'.

YouTube video by Trailer Star

12 track album

The Great Stink ‘But the Dragon was loose at the time . . .No one had challenged him lately . . .He got to our part of the world; nobody saw him ofcourse, there was just like a bad smell in the airand everything went sour; people’s mouths and eyeschanged their look overnight – and the government…

In the heart of a stolen starWe are back to wigwams againNames on limbs just incase it comesHurricane Benjamin destroyer of tents,Destroyer of children and whole bloodlines. Fuck it, lets get back to relatable world events -Someone in England died from the skinny jabAlan misgendered Beth again raise a low-level concernAnd don't worry about Sudan it's a mythical place…

This year marks the 50th anniversary since the original broadcast of one of the most beloved of British television series, The Good Life. Created and written by John Esmonde and Bob Larby, the series' premise is well known: namely the highs and lows of a middle-aged suburban couple who decide to quit the rat race and become self sufficient in contrast to the affluent, acquisitive lifestyle of their upwardly mobile neighbours.

Fifty years is a long time in politics... and it was fifty years ago that four young anti-militarists in Aberdeen were arrested under the arcane charge of Incitement to Disaffection. I was one of those accused of trying "to seduce a member of Her Majesty's Forces from their duty". Though I doubt whether I've ever seduced anyone in my life, in this case it was for giving members of the armed forces the leaflet…

REGRETS He likes to see the faint blue smokestream into darkness as he says farewell.He relishes the paper’s acceptance of flame:a mystic kiss from tender whispered match. He stuffs in remnants of his wedding day,a girl’s name: he loved but never told,the guitar he never bought or learned to play.He rolls the strands in slivers of his skin…

(Adapted from the Preface to The Alderbank Wade) I first developed a fascination with the political and religious nuances surrounding the English Civil War, or as it is termed in Marxian historicism, the English Revolution, and subsequent Republic, at 19 when I spent one summer voraciously reading various books on the subject. What particularly fascinated me was how a whole nation could be hurled into internecine conflict, in part, because of ideas, as opposed to territorial or tribal reasons, and to such an extent that it divided families and communities across the country.

Read any good verse novels lately? Personally, I can’t think of anything truly outstanding in that most challenging of verse forms since Robin Robertson’s The Long Take, published seven years ago, and Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red from 1998. Indeed, the verse novel currently seems to be the province of Young Adult writers, with the likes of Jacqueline Woodson’s…

Cassandra Peterson has had quite the life. Bullying mother. Rough diamond father. Traumatic childhood accident (pan; boiling water). Socially awkward. Suddenly voluptuous. Go-go dancer in her mid-teens. Showgirl while still a good few years off being able to buy a drink legally. Self-styled “virgin groupie”. Accidental tourist, grand-touring Europe on a wing, a prayer, a hustle and zero budget. Extra in a Fellini opus.

XTC IN THE SHIRES

12 track album

What’s the weirdest zombie film you’ve ever seen? Zombeavers? Fido? Anna and the Apocalypse? I’ll see you and I’ll raise you: David Gladwell’s Requiem for a Village. Gladwell is mainly remembered as the editor of Lindsay Anderson’s If… and O Lucky Man!, and Requiem for a Village is, well, not remembered at all. Not that its struggle to find an audience is exactly perplexing.