Blogs

This is from the AQA (formerly known as the Assesments and Qualifications Aliance) website: The Department for Education announced on 10 September 2015 that AS and A-level Creative Writing cannot be redeveloped under government changes to A-levels. That basically means that AS and A levels in creatve writing are to be discontinued. For those interested the full directive is available to read here: Read the announcement If you aren't already...

There will come a time when things will start to make sense again; the frame you broke, the comedy that made you choke, the meal you ate, tasteless but good all the same. The paradox of life, soon all of it will make sense. But until then, whatever we are doing now, will only take us a step closer to what we'll fully understand then.

ABCtales, as many of you will already know, is the go-to writers site for Unbound publishing so this makes very interested reading: How crowdfunding is fuelling the avant garde Exciting times!

A little on the early side this week as I'm on holiday and there's a swimming pool ten feet away waiting for the pleasure of my company... Nottingham by all accounts was a huge success, so a million thanks to VeraClark for her super-efficient organising. We are planning something for London in November, so watch out for further details. Meanwhile, ABC has been bursting at the seams with quality poetry and prose - so much to choose from! Poem of...

A good grey day. How I love a cloudy, sun blocked, clouds rolling in, grey day. I am lazy personified on a typical sun drenched day with the heat melting my rubber soles…but give me a good storm brewing and suddenly I am pulsing with energy and racing thoughts. At the first clap of thunder, I find a window and watch the clouds roll in. I thrill to the sway of the trees and the teaming rain…I am in heaven with the artistic dance of lightning. I...

Our next ABCtales reading event is bound for Nottingham... tomorrow night! Do join us on Saturday 5 th September at 7pm, The Cross Keys, 15 Byard Lane, Nottingham, NG1 2GJ for prose and poetry in a splendid city. It’s a vibrant reading line up, including Blackjack Davey, Johnshade, Philip Sidney, airy fairy, Bear, Scratch, London Calling, Luigi Pagano, Denzella, Lisa H. If you’d like to read, there are still a couple of slots, so drop me an...

It is such a pleasure to read all the new submissions that appear on ABCtales each week. Long-standing members still provide a plethora of top-flight writing but it's true that they have to constantly strive to keep up with the steady influx of all the many new talented members that the site has aquired over the last 12 months. One of the 'newbies' takes this week's story slot. It's David Martin with his artistically drawn Relic. It really is...

HOME no one leaves home unless
 home is the mouth of a shark
 you only run for the border
 when you see the whole city running as well your neighbors running faster than you breath bloody in their throats the boy you went to school with who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory is holding a gun bigger than his body you only leave home when home won’t let you stay. no one leaves home unless home chases you fire under feet hot blood in your...

One of our most dedicated and talented writer/editors contacted me earlier this evening and it is with great pleasure that I can share the following announcement on their behalf. Poem of the Month, 'running in the rain' by Accidentallyexisting: running in the rain This poem has a wonderful sense of rejuvenation. It is refreshing and energising, a celebration of the physical that still tingles as a memory or, as in my case, the imagined. Story of...

I hope the sun glowed down on you this summer. I spent most of August in Cornwall’s limpet pools and became obsessed with photographing mussels on sliding perilous rocks. Thanks to Canonette, her psychegeographic theme inspired me to write about a beach I’ve visited for years in a sinister new way. This month your poetry tore up the map and dug up old haunts, you explored new places and reinvented settings with daring. The strongest poems tended...