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Another blistering week for poetry and stories here on ABCTales. Congratulations go to Esmerelda-O who is on a roll at the moment - watch out for her next one - for All the Suffering Sick Grey Reptiles of the Past, and to johnshade for his extraordinary Soldier's Leap. http://www.abctales.com/story/johnshade/soldier ’s-leap http://www.abctales.com/story/esmerelda-o/all-suffocating-sick-grey-rept... For this week's Inspiration Point I want you to...

"From the Collection of the Artist." Kurt Vonnegut turns up in the most unlikely of places. I’m not familiar with his writing, but I’m reading a book by Michael Lewis Liar’s Poker in which the author quotes Vonnegut below to describe how the bond market works to distort reality, and to make it seem normal, a theme the everyman Billy Pilgrim’s character stumbles into in his Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 . There is a magic moment, during which a man...

I closed the newsletter of earlier this week with the entreaty that you should all get writing and boy-oh-boy did you take me at my word. The number of new submissions has been incredible and the standard is inspiring. The two weekly picks could have gone to a few different writers but in the end these two got the decision. Poem of the week is awarded to Philip Sidney for Wolf Fish : http://www.abctales.com/story/philip-sidney/wolf-fish and...

I’m not sure why Self-Publishing should have an exclamation mark! But I’m not going to argue with an exclamation mark. This book cost less than a pint of beer and more importantly I spent about five hours reading it. I dutifully followed all the links to some impressive Amazon sites that featured self-published authors have set up to sell their novels. I was familiar with some of the names featured. Joe Lawrence and East End Butcher Boy is...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b05qkzt2/louis-theroux-transgender-kids Louis Theroux used to write books. He’s moved into the far more lucrative market of documenting those in our society that don’t quite fit in. He writes the scripts for these programmes. Has his own crew. Puts it together like a jigsaw. A novel approach. I get the feeling Louis doesn’t quite fit in either. An alien presence among those we hold at arm’s length and treat...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b05px4sk/strangeways-britains-toughest-prison-riot Rex Bloomstein visits HMP Wharton in Nottinghamshire, the largest sex offender prison in Europe. 841 men range in age from 21 to 91 (93 was the oldest inmate). They have committed a variety of offences from rape to downloading child porn. The average cost for each prisoner is £27 000 per annum. What is unusual about HMP Wharton is the mix of social classes...

Discovering this, 41 years after it came out I am astounded these these young men who had nothing extra about them apart from probably some classical training created a work so big, individual, beautiful and unpredictably hypnotic. It's mainly instrumental with great crescendos into glory, some little voice bits, a few deliberately comic some more serious singing of love or loneliness. It's a huge bright elaborate canvas, music by image rather...

This month a great writer and very much valued ABCtales editor, Vera Clark, has done the hard yards and provided us with March's winners. Here's her rationale: This month’s picks bring us two different literary genres written with style, authenticity and impact. Not only do they provide excellent writing and content but secondly, they employ experimental form to showcase elegance and intelligence. Both pieces grabbed me by my ears and gave me...

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/coalition/on-demand/57947-001 Timing is everything in politics. Growth in the economy. A few weeks from another Tory triumph, or another patchy coalition? Scriptwriter James Graham looks backwards to what happened five-years ago, when the Conservatives formed a coalition government with the Liberals. For me it’s a case of who do I hate the most. In Ten Days that Shook the World , American socialist and...

This is not a modern collection of thirteen and a bit Kurt Vonnegut short stories as the publication date suggests. In a letter to a Mr Miller dated 1951 Kurt Vonnegut addresses, anthropology, the Indian Ghost Dance of 1894 (which interested me) and among other things, whether writing can be learned at a school of writing. He concludes: ‘This letter is sententious crap, shot full of self pity…I quit GE, if I’m not a writer then I’m nothing. This...