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2020 Cerasus Poetry Olympics Souvenir Anthology

Summer’s Up! We’ve all had a great summer, after a lousy spring when the virus ran riot through the population, and hospitals were sorely pressed to cope with the flood of virus victims. The worst of it perhaps was the way it ran riot through many care homes, when people were not sufficiently isolated from the virus, after the hospitals sent older patients back to or into care homes for their care. But summer was okay. Most of us thought we had...

Goalkeeper is an easy pick. Celtic hired a private jet to bring Vasilos Barkas back from a recent international. He was on the bench for Greece. He’s not really done anything that Scott Bain, or Conor Hazard, or you’d expect any other bog-standard goalie to do. He’s certainly not won us matches the way—may he rot in reserve-team-football hell the Southampton keeper we got on loan last season did. Hope we don’t need him, but time for Barkas to...

I couldn’t find my phone, and I asked Mary to ring it. And I’d a message from Laughing Boy, Craig—telling me his older brother, Kevin, was dead. My thoughts were Kevin’s poor old mum, Lynn. But Kevin always kept an eye out for Laughing Boy. And when he hooked up with Carla and her son, Aaron, they were part of the family. When Jack was born, Kevin taught him how to fucking swear. These were the kind of life skills he had to learn, pronto, or...

Lots of wonderful things to read on the site this week, and our Picks are two absolute gems. Story of the Week is Rosalie Kempthorne's beguiling 'Boys and Girls', a response to last week's Inspiration Point. It's a fairy tale and, like all the best fairy tales, it has an unsettling edge and hints of darkness amongst the beautiful magic: https://www.abctales.com/story/rosaliekempthorne/boys-and-girls Poem of the Week is Noo's searing 'Oath'. It's...

The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen is a holy book, one of those books you could read again and again (but probably won't). It was reprinted as a Vintage Classic for a new generation of readers. I got called me a book snob, online. It irked me, at first. Readings what I do. I’m one of the clichéd, if I’ve nothing to read, I’ll read the ingredients of the sauce bottle kinda guy. I even read poetry, but I don’t put it on my chips very often. But...