Callander Haiku

Cover photo © Angela Topping
One of the latest publications from diehard press is CALLANDER HAIKU edited by Sally Evans. No it isn't a monthly calender but an anthology of haiku based on the Scottish town of Callander.

photograph © Gerald England
Many of the haiku are by poets who have attended the annual Callander Poetry Weekends hosted in September each year at the King's Bookshop.

Light in the bookshop
Sets each gilded spine aglow
against jewelled colours of hide

Angela Topping

L-R: Margaret Gillies Brown, Ian Blake, Andy Robson, Elizabeth Rimmer, Gerry Singh and his wife, Sally Evans, Colin Will, Christine England, Maureen Weldon, Sally James.
Photo © Gerald England
My own contributions are from the 2005 weekend and were published alongside reports of the event on the Poetry Scotland website. Although no longer live it can be accessed via the Internet Wayback Machine archives.

photograph © Gerald England

clack clack of hens
breeze through the garden
a poet speaks

Charlie Gracie

photograph © Gerald England

level bowling green
a perfect square -
too hot to play

Colin Will

the pavement
is at war with the trees
roots are winning

Christine England

photograph © Gerald England
CALLANDER HAIKU
ISBN 978-0946230-93-8
Price £5 (including postage) from
diehard at the Callander Press
Kings Bookshop
91-93 Main Street
Callander
FK17 8BQ

The Haiku 100 new edition

sunday-morning sex
lasts only as long as the
children's video

© Gerald England.

was my contribution to THE HAIKU HUNDRED.

The Haiku Hundred represented the outcome of the largest haiku event ever staged in the UK. IRON Press, in collaboration with the British Haiku Society, received more than 5,500 submissions when they invited work for this small anthology.

videos are now yesterday's technology and my contribution isn't the only one to reference pre-millennium technology:

On the VDU,
a bright ray of sunshine falls,
and the message fades.

© John Light.

This historic little book was published initially in 1992 and ran to six prints. It sold more than 10,000 copies making it the biggest selling book of English language haiku in the UK. It has been out of print for many years but is now published in a new format with every one of the 100 haiku intact.

Most of the haiku are timeless and some of the authors are no longer with us. One of my favourites is:

drawing a home
with a fenced in yard
the deaf boy

© Francine Porad

ISBN: 978-0-9931245-0-1
Price £5.00
Published in October 2015 by Iron Press
Edited by Peter Mortimer
Cover design by Kate Jones.

Sons of Camus Writers International Journal 2015

My contribution to the 2015 edition of Sons of Camus Writers International Journal 2015 marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II is this image of the Monument at Lakki in the White Mountains, Crete.

It is printed on the inside of the back cover opposite a poem by Changming Yuan

STANDING, WE ARE UNITED

on the only rock found in this waste land
let's arise, arise high against the sky
by standing on the shoulders of each other
not only to re-find the same and one
language we used to speak in Babel
not only to see further than Wang Zhihuan
after he climbed to another storey, or
than Newton on the shoulders of giants
but to use our own bodies as a totem pole
in honour of the tens of millions of civilians
slaughtered in Nanjing, murdered in Auschwitz
and killed in numerous villages and towns
from eastern China to western Europe

hey, do you see the spectre drifting around
right above Yasukuni Shrine as Abe
and his followers pay tribute to the war criminals?

© Changming Yuan

In Russia during WWII, up to 35 million people were killed. Russian V-Day 9 May 1945.
In China during WWII, more than 20 million people were killed.
Chinese V-Day 3 September 1945.
In both cases, many were civilians, unarmed and unprepared.

You can read more poems by Changming Yuan on his blog yuanspoetry©.

The 200 page journal (ISSN 1705-429X) is edited by Ann J Davidson and published by Rubi Andredakis (email roubi@cytanet.com.cy) from Rubini Publications, Gropius Street No 30, Limassol 3076, Cyprus. Price Euro 9; UK £6; USA $10; Canada $15 (including shipping)

There is a wealth of reading, poems, essays, fiction, reviews in the new volume. Other contributors include Raymond Humphreys, Herbert Kuhner, Neil Leadbeater, John Light, Morelle Smith, Sam Smith, Maureen Weldon and a host more.

A contribution to The Weekend in Black and White.

ABC Wednesday J is for Jocelynne Preciouse (1930 - 2010)

© 2009, Jocelynne Precious
It was in June that I learnt Jocelynne Precious had died suddenly. I knew her as the editor of the magazine Curlew. We first met in the mid-70s at meetings of the Yorkshire Federation of Small Presses. In more recent times she would ring me up about three times a year to talk about poets and small press matters. She never had a computer but would look things up on the Internet at the library in Harrogate.

Jocelynne studied under Clifford Ellis at Bath Academy of Art (aka "Corsham"). One of the art teachers there was William Scott who taught her painting. She was a member of Harrogate Writers' Circle.

Issue 64 of Curlew is a chapbook collection by Jocelynne called SWIMMING IN THE NORTH SEA.

trying to stay afloat
trying to make sense of it all
and on the straight horizon
a long slim boat

A number of the poems (like the one above) are reproduced from hand-written manuscript rather than typescript.


Issue 65 has work by Neil Leadbeater, Daniel Healy, Peter Asher, John Younger and A C Evans. The cover design is by Peter Precious.

Issue 66 was the 1st issue of Chaucer described as

An occasional publication covering literature and the Arts; philosophy; history & current affairs; genre fiction (science fiction/fantasy/crossover) humour; reviews, criticism, correspondence.

Referring to House of Fame, Steve Sneyd asks

"Did Chaucer indeed see the far future in this long narrative poem of 1379, its title, after all, derived from Ovid's Metamorphoses and thus backward, not forward, looking?"

Rodney Noon answers the question "Where do you write?" and there are poems by Anne Grant and Alan Hardy.

Patricia Prime reviewed her collection THE SURPRISING SUMMER for NHI Review where you can also find reviews of Curlew issues ##51, 52, 54, 56. Elsewhere on this blog are reviews of ##57, 58 and also ##59, 60

A stalwart of the small press scene since the 70s, she will be much missed.

For more J posts visit ABC Wednesday.

John Light: Chimerical City

The writer pretending to be a poet, snapped by his wife pretending she's a photographer, in a folly pretending it's a temple of art (but the hat was real).

John Light's latest poetry collection is Chimerical City, a series of poems about London where the author was born. My favourite two poems from the book are reproduced here, as well as the photograph above (a version of which appears on the back cover), by permission of the author.

London Travellers

On the underground
no one speaks to anyone else;
in the dark depths of the metropolis
life is serious;
people read or think lonely thoughts,
thoughts not to be shared with other faces.

But in the sunshine
of summer streets above the ground
bright buses are like caravanserais
of antiquity,
noisy with gossip and laughter,
sharing the commerce of a great city.

***

Summoned by Betjeman

Morning train from Tring to Euston,
Underground to Stepney Green,
Climbing stairs to sunlit pavements
So unlike the Chilterns green.

Journey from the tree clad hillsides
To the city clothed in stone,
From the little lanes long winding
To the broad straight streets wind-blown.

Through the blue vault, slowly drifting,
Come white clouds from western shires.
Sunlight glints on broken bottles,
Sharper than the woodland briars.

I love hillsides green and graceful,
Where wild flowers skirt the roads;
Yet I write of darkest London,
Where humanity implodes.

Chimerical City: Poems of London by John Light
Photon Press
37 The Meadows
Berwick-upon-Tweed
Northumberland
TD15 1NY
UK

ISBN 978 1 897968 37 6
£4
Website: www.photonpress.co.uk

The Sons of Camus Writers International Journal #6

Laboratooriumi --
grass in cracks under wooden doors
so quiet

Russia's Venice
from this one bridge
eight to be seen

fish market
next to the herring stall
second-hand books

These are just three of my contributions to the latest issue of this journal for writers over 55. You'll find in it nine "charcoals" based on photographs of Tallinn, Saint Petersburg and Helsinki.

John Light contributes a story which he says is extracted from a novel under construction. It is an enthralling piece and I enjoyed

I distrust experts. They see everything with a trained eye and the trained eye sees only what it has been trained to see ...

Raymond Humphreys has an essay on Poetry in Translation whilst Herbert Williams asks Who are the British?.

There is more artwork with a series of collages by Alan Perry as well as short stories, reviews and poetry to be found in the journal's 200 pages.

Editor, Ann J Davidson, is currently considering submissions for the next issue by email at scwijournal@gmail.com

Read the review of issue #5

Read reviews of issues ##1-4 on NHI Review

The Sons of Camus Writers International Journal
Rubini Publications
Gropious St #30
Limassol 3706
Cyprus
ISSN 1705-429X
CY£5 [€9; UK£6; US$10; CAN$15 including shipping]

Haiku Scotland #18

The latest issue of Haiku Scotland is #18.

£1 for four pages of A4 is not bad value. Despite its name the magazine is limited neither to haiku nor Scotland, publishing a variety of short verse from all over the world with Ireland and the USA predominant in this issue.

Featured poet is Devin Wayne Davis whose contributions include

perspective: overpass

rome of tomorrow;
parthenon off-ramps;
swap-meet coliseum;
car lot catacombs
beneath the freeway.

A couple of my favourites here are Helen Buckingham's update of Stevie Smith's famous image:

kids on the beach--
not waving
but phoning

and John W Sexton's

unsettled night
catching the cat's tail
in the kitchen door

The issue also includes a report on the results of the 2008 International Haiku Competiton by the Irish Haiku Society.

Haiku Scotland
2 Elizabeth Gardens
Stoneyburn
West Lothian
EH47 8BP
UK

ISSN 1744-7232
£1
cheques payable to "F. Henderson"

email Haiku Scotland

Read reviews of earlier issues on NHI Review.

...

The Poetry Church Vol 13 #4

The Poetry Church has changed editors. John Waddington-Feather has handed the reins over to Tony Reavill. So now instead of being published by Feather Books it comes from Moorside Works and Music.

So far the format is barely changed; apart from a group of poem-prayers at the beginning, the poems are published in alphabetic order of author's surnames rather than any thematic arrangement. Although a few reviewers have rightly criticised the standard of some of the work published in this magazine, which at times seems to be preaching to the converted, it has a number of excellent writers among its contributors.

A couple of my favourites from this issue are Dorothy Koenigsberger's WOLF ANGEL

... one appeared to me - as animal!
Caged wolf, in a dinky upstate zoo,

and Patricia Lucas' COLUMBINE

Her pink, white or mauve slender flowers
that grace late spring woodlands and hedgerows
will let their seed spread.

The issue ends with some short reviews and items of news.

The Poetry Church
Moorside Works and Music
Eldwick Crag Farm
High Eldwick
Otley Road
Bingley
BD16 3BB
UK
£3.50
Subscriptions £12 [US$25]
email The Poetry Church

Read reviews of earlier issues on NHI Review.

Ian M Emberson: Mourning Ring

Mourning Ring by poet and artist, Ian M Emberson, is not just a collection of nine poems with a Brontë connection. The chapbook is a work of art in itself. The poems are printed using a script-font that resembles writing but is very easy to read. The margins of the pages are covered by Ian's charcoal-like drawings. LIFE'S LONE WILDERNESS, for example

She watches from that lonely house
the narrative of sky
the cirrus twisting in the wind
beyond the grouse's cry -
...
and flowing from her moving pen
a tale of two who yearn,
as one sail trembles on the winds
of exile and return

carries below it a ship sailing on - is it moor or sea? - the detail matters not.

More information can be found on the Brontë blog

IAN M EMBERSON: MOURNING RING
Angria Press
1 Highcroft Road
Todmorden
OL14 5LZ
UK.

ISBN 978 0 9521693 6 9
£3.00

Visit the website of Ian M Emberson

Creature Features #15

Subtitled "The Ark of Writing", Creature Features is a magazine of short stories, poetry and artwork whose subject matter relates to animals of all kinds. Indeed as well as cats and dogs, birds of all description, there are butterflys, caterpillars, rats, badgers, lions, walruses, elephants, crickets and hermit crabs all included.

Whilst this is definitely a magazine for lovers of animals, it probably isn't for lovers of fine literature. Though many of the articles are interesting and quite well written, few of the so-called haiku are correctly labelled thus and many of the pieces, especially the poetry, are what I would term "twee".

Nonetheless it contains some gems such as Herbert Williams' set of poems about a hawk

He brought us trophies
with pride, put
mangled remains
at our feet
and could not understand our horror.

Also excellent are Loraine Stayer's story GRANDMOTHER TO A DUCK and Dr. Adolf P Shvedchikov's chilling COME, WE'VE FOUND YOUR LOST CAT.

Creature Features
Rubuni Publications
Gropious Street No. 30
Limassol, 3076
Cyprus

ISSN 1450-3352
UK £5; USA $8; Europe €7; Australia $15; Canada $14; NZ $13
Subscriptions: 4 issues UK £20; USA $32; Europe €28; Australia $60; Canada $56; NZ $52

email Creature Features

Maureen Weldon: Breakfast at Kilumney

Maureen Weldon reading at the Poetry Scotland Weekend, Callander 2005.
photograph © 2008, Gerald England.

The latest collection from Chester based poet Maureen Weldon is BREAKFAST AT KILUMNEY.

ARGENTINA is a poem about her mother Mary, born in that country to an Irish father and a Spanish mother. At the age of six, the mother dies and Mary is shipped alone, without her six brothers, to be brought up by her aunt in Ireland. I had the pleasure of knowing Maureen's mother in later life, but these details of history were new to me.

In THIS FLAT, Maureen writes

I am writing my way out of here.
Report what is necessary, not another word

I will pack,
ten years - music and love affairs,

and then in NOTES ON MOVING HOUSE

All is stuffed in boxes
...
Then the searching, always the searching.

My favourite in the collection is the title poem

BREAKFAST AT KILUMNEY

"It's a lovely way to wake up," she says.
Down the paddock, through half doors -
horse's faces.
By the back door - six cats
mewing for breakfast.
A bright-haired child bangs her spoon,
calls, "berries more berries."
The kitchen brims with toast
and newly made marmalade.
I look around this table.
in a hum of voices...
These are eyes I love...
And outside,
the yard is waiting to be busy.

Also included is Winter Respite in Grosvenor Park first published here.

MAUREEN WELDON: BREAKFAST AT KILUMNEY
Poetry Monthly Press
39 Cavendish Road
Long Eaton
Nottingham
NG10 4HY
UK

ISBN 978 1 906357 31 3
£5

Anne Lewis-Smith: Red Shoes

I first met Anne Lewis-Smith in 1970 when she lived in Northamptonshire and was chairing World Poetry Day. She'd submitted some poems for my new magazine Headland and appropriately the first poem in the first issue was her poem First.

She is now 80 and this, her eleventh collection, will possibly be her last. I'm sure I have a copy of her third collection FLESH AND FLOWERS (Mitre Press 1967) in my bookshelves. I can't just put my hand on it now, but, whilst looking for it, found PLACES AND PASSIONS (Mitre Press 1986) and inside are my scribbled notes for a review

This hardback collection is full of sensual power and gentle passion with seriousness and humour cohabiting a world of reality.

RED SHOES opens with a macabre but haunting poem

a counterpoint for female voice, between the Girl alone and a chorus of five representing the River

which is about a drowning girl.

Among my favourites in this collection are CHILD'S SWING ON PELISTRY BEACH

Beside me, in marram, a dark boughed tree
gave shelter, where ropes, knotted easily
round branches, let a small wooden swing hang free.

and STAYING ON THE BOAT

What did I expect ...
... paths would still be bracken hid
laced with tall nettles so you held
your bare arms high wading the green?
... I saw bare well-worn tracks
on the southern hill, but not our tree

ANNE LEWIS-SMITH: RED SHOES AND OTHER POEMS
Poetry Monthly Press
39 Cavendish Road
Long Eaton
Nottingham
NG10 4HY
UK

ISBN 978 1 906357 28 3
£6.50

Read a review of an earlier collection on NHI Review.

Read another poem by Anne Lewis-Smith on the Zimmerzine Archive.

...

Chanticleer Magazine #20

The editorial to Chanticleer Magazine #20 says that the magazine might have closed down after #18 but continues due to the amount of material the editor continues to receive and which he wants to publish.

It goes on a bit about the divide between "prestige" mags that are "safe" and the "little" mags that take risks. I prefer not to comment on the particulars of this often un-useful debate and look instead at the contents of the issue.

It starts with an intriquing and delightful poem by Erisa Linsky. It spreads over four pages and truly few magazines would devote that amount of space to one poem.

The magazine publishes several excellent poems, a bevy of reviews and lengthy article by the editor on the political philosopher Hobbes.

All of this makes for a magazine that is very different from the run-of-the-mill and long may it continue.

Chanticleer Magazine
6/1 Jamaica Mews
Edinburgh
EH3 6HN
UK

ISSN 1478-0704
£3
cheques payable to "Richard Livermore"

Read reviews of earlier issues on NHI Review

.

Shearsman ##77 & 78

The latest double issue of Shearsman is ##77-78.

Christopher Middleton provides a string of poems about birds

the barn owl on his beam,
kestrel swivelling on a shaft of air
...
the ways their plummage
fits the planes
or tunnels in the air,
...
lonesome the loon calls back birds of Ur,
birds of Babylon,
for brilliant breeds have perished probably.

Gregory O'Brien gives us a set of poems based on the Spanish exploration of Doubtful Sound, New Zealand in 1793.

Punta de Espinosa

Together we played the wind-tossed
waters of Wet Jacket Arm.

Carrie Etter takes us along McLean County Highway 39

tar shrugs goes to dirt
gravel's slow crunch over
winter with no hill for
frost to the horizon

Astrid van Baalen writes of The saddest tree at Kew

There are words that twist the finger raw
like only once, and yet again once more.

Janice Fixter has been to Staffa

There's a wooden boat lurching against the storm tide
and for the first time violins are stringing out Hebridean notes

inside a stranger's head.

I know the feeling, ever since August 1984, just the name brings the music into my head and the cry of "green tarpaulins" but that's another story.

Also impressive in this issue, of which I've mentioned but a fraction, are George Messo's translations of Birhan Keskin.

Shearsman
58 Velwell Road
Exeter
EX4 4LD
UK
ISSN 0260-8049
£8.50 [$13.50]
Subscriptions: 2 dble-issues £12 [Europe £14; RoW £15]
cheques [sterling only] payable to "Shearsman Books"

visit the website of Shearsman Books

Read an account of Issue ##75-76.

Read reviews of earlier issues on NHI Review.

Gwilym Williams: Genteel Messages

Despite being around for a good while now, this is Gwilym Williams' first poetry collection. The sexegenarian, now based in Vienna, was born in Wales but brought up in Runcorn, Cheshire, a town which features in my favourite poem from the collection

RUNCORN EAST

with apologies to Edward Thomas

Yes, I remember Runcorn East
the name, because one afternoon
the beat-up local train squealed to a halt
unexpectedly - and I swear it wasn't my fault.

The heater thrummed and someone lit-up
his fag in the no-smoking carriage
and someone else coughed. And what I saw
through the murky window was the usual weeds

and the ticket-collector out on the platform
badgering the driver and pointing excitedly
at the signal ahead which was on red. It seemed
we'd stopped unexpectedly - like the end of time.

And for those few moments we wondered what
the hell was going on in sleepy Cheshire.
Had some idiot pulled the emergency cord or was
there an H5N1-infected blackbird down the line ...

Note:
the designation H5N1 is used for a type of
bird flu that is said to affect humans

Birds are the subject of another poem, SPOTTING

On Mull and the Ardnamrchan
...
golden eagles and white tailed eagles,
...
plus a possible rail
and a probable crake
not crossed off.
...
...
So now we're rugged-up in the Beetle
with our paste sandwiches and tea
and the crake firmly crossed off.

As for the rail we've gone off it.

GWILYM WILLIAMS: GENTEEL MESSAGES
Poetry Monthly Press
39 Cavendish Road
Long Eaton
Nottingham
NG10 4HY
UK

ISBN 978 1 906357 17 7
£5.25

The author's blog is Poet in Residence.

The Seventh Quarry #8

The Seventh Quarry is a magazine firmly based in Swansea but featuring poets from other corners of the UK, Europe and Japan as well as North and South America.

Editor Peter Thabit Jones and Aeronwy Thomas have written a Walking Guide to Dylan Thomas's Greenwich Village, New York which can be downloaded as a PDF.

My favourite pieces from this issue include Frances White's LLWYNPERDID FARM which has some lovely lines

... the farmer's new ponies
ungroomed and half-broken
...
only the whack of a leaf-stripped fern for mastery
we were release from the farmyard
clattering on stony lanes
up through the pine forest
...
disappearing like a meteor over Rhondda.

and ZAIDE'S STATUE by Marilyn Mohr

My grandfather sits on Seventh Avenue,
enthroned in bronze, sitting at his machine,
...
a monument to all the workers,
who wore themselves to thin cloth,
laboring in this noisy rag trade district.

Wes Magee describes BLEAKNESS ON BLAKEY RIDGE in February

an abandoned car lies in a deep drift.

Swallowed, the ram's carcass
and a roadside sign that read
'Drive with care. 50 lambs killed last year'.

#9 is due out January 2009

The Seventh Quarry
Dan-y-bryn
74 Cwm Level Road
Brynhyfryd
Swansea
SA5 9DY
UK

ISSN 1745-2236
£3.50 [$10]
Subscriptions £7 [$20] annually
UK cheques payable to "Peter Thabit Jones"
[USA International Money Orders]

Visit the website of Peter Thabit Jones

Curlew ##59-60

The latest issues of Curlew are ##59-60.The first is subtitled

THE CHILDREN OF PARADISE
A memoir of the children who grew up after the war; with thanks to those have contributed.

It starts with editor J Precious' recollection of her time at Corsham in the 1950s under principal Clifford Ellis. One of the art teachers there was William Scott who taught her painting.

This leads on to John Younger who studied art at Croydon School of Art. Blindness forced him to abandon art in favour of English and he became a lecturer in the School of English at Leeds University. He retired to Lincolnshire in 1991 and poetry has since been his principle creative interest. He writes using a computer fitted with a voice synthesiser. Many of his poems have an artist theme like his HOMAGE to James Ensor (1860-1949) which begins

Half-British demi-Belge, his mixed strands
made a world where fact and fable coexist
and interact with the delicate, as when
he paints himself in a hat enfleuri,
and gross, with devils Dzitts and Hihanoux.

The issue ends with some previously published essays from the 70s on the subject of early small press magazines such as Bogg and Krax.

#60 is a more general issue of the mag with poems from Paul Tristram, Steve Sneyd, Tom Kelly, Will Daunt, Alan Hardy, Joyce Walker, myself and others.

Curlew
Hare Cottage
Kettlesing
Harrogate
HG3 2LB
UK

ISSN 1463-8347
£2.50 post paid
£5 overseas
no foreign currency, cheques nor stamps accepted.

Read my review of issues ##57-58
Read reviews of earlier issues on NHI Review

...

Marina Zografou: Spellbounds Forms

The latest in a long list of books by Marina Zografou is Spellbounds Forms which is dedicated to the memory of her sister Athena who left her alone on 26th Nov 2007.

You left fast as if you were in a hurry to meet the paradise
...
You were fond of the beauteous, of the high quality
You were whelmed by waves of mien,
of dignity, of consistence, of offering
Everything always guided you to good
... you live in my mind each moment
A blond girl with blue eyes, all lighted up and beautiful

This is a bilingual edition in Greek and English of over 200 pages. It includes details of her books and numerous international awards, Patricia Prime's review of FOUR BOOKS POETRY and some tributes by other writers.

MARINA P ZOGRAFOU: SPELLBOUNDS FORMS
Ifestionos 46
Thrakomakedones 13671
Athens
Greece

Two poems from an earlier collection, LEGIONS OF THE NIGHT can be found on the Zimmerzine Archive.

Read reviews of earlier works on NHI Review.

Handshake #75

Handshake is an irregular magazine normally consisting of a single sheet of A4 with notices and mini-reviews on one side and a selection of sf-related poetry on the other.

This issue is a special one and consists of 12 pages. There are more than fifty poems included from poets such as Cardinal Cox, Peter Day, Bryn Fortey, Bill West, John Light, Geoff Stevens and A C Evans.

My favorites are Paul Tristram's THE ALIENS HAVE LANDED - here's the middle verse

The aliens have landed
they are up on the moon.
They'd come down to Cornwall
but there isn't any room.
The siamese twins life
is sadly falling apart.
Her sister will not let her
give away their heart.

and Raymond Leonard's NIGHT IN CHINGLE HALL

...
Ghosts perched on posts made precarious hosts
while they gleamed and screamed for a fight.
Devils from high levels performed crazy revels
by swooping and looping like kites.
Ghouls on one-legged stools sat crying like fools
then twisted and misted with fright.
Wizards and lizards and spooks with no gizzards
beamed while we screamed for the light.
...

Editor, John Francis Haines, despite the eye problems that prevented him attending the recent Zimmercon event in Chester, is getting on well, using his all-seeing right eye. He tells me that the next bumper edition will be #100, although that'll be a few years in the future yet. I'm looking forward to it.

Handshake
5 Cross Farm
Station Road North
Fearnhead
Warrington
WA2 0QG
UK

available for sae

visit the information web page for Handshake

Read reviews of earlier issues on NHI Review OnLine.

...

Thorny Locust Vol 17 Summer/Fall

The latest issue of Thorny Locust is Vol 17 Summer/Fall.

It has a full-colour cover for, I think, the first time, with artwork by assistant editor, Dave Paarmann, which runs over to the back-cover.

It is stated that

In this issue writers assert that humans, from pet lovers to rapists, do not follow any sensible rules to live by.

Make of it what you will. Not all this enthralled me much but there were highlights such as Charles Cantrell's poem about a 3 a.m. nude, J Jaime Parajo's alphabetcised political primer, Maril Crabtree's CONFESSIONAL and WALDEN POND by B Z Niditch. The best though was saved till last - the one bit of prose amongst the poems, a story by Myrtle Archer about a group of old ladies battling with their menfolk's use of viagra. It is a superb piece of humour with a sting in the tail.

Thorny Locust
PO Box 32631,
Kansas City,
MO 64171-5631,
USA
ISSN 1094-0154
$5
Subscription $15 pa
checks payable to Silvia Kofler

Read reviews of earlier issues on NHI Review OnLine.