You gave Philip Sidney’s framing device lots of ink and thought this month and as a result, wonderful window poems have emerged all July. Seeing what you’ve done has made a deep and indulgent reading experience. A big thanks to Philip for the idea and here are three notable creations to peek at: Hudsonmoon’s window looks on profound loss and explores, beautifully, the all-encompassing questions of faith, pain and survival in a candid,...

I'm reading the Guardian for the first time in years (any newspaper for the first time in years, really). Only problem being that you only really need one a week. Maybe it was the frustration of throwing away so many daily papers largely unread that put me off the whole idea of newspapers. Maybe it's the "news" bit of the "paper" that I don’t need. Fascinating articles. Still engrossed in yesterday's, which I bought at the station for parking...

It's taken ages to decide on the picks today - so many high quality pieces to choose from this week, but here they finally are: Poem of the Week goes to a.lesser.thing for her fabulous Carnival Ride - a breathlessly paced swoop and dive through a chaotic life, and Story of the Week to Noo for Gleam in which family disfunction and myth are woven together into a thing of true beauty. Congratulations to both! http://www.abctales.com/story/...

A perfect time to write, the quiet moment is filled with music…soft strains of guitar and deep mellow vocals... close my eyes and feel…memories evoke stories...friends, lovers….windy streets, sand dunes of sunshine, snow drifts and sleigh rides….clear strains of memory inducing lyrics. I am swept away into worlds of dialogues and moments of intensity. My fingers fly across the keyboard--barely keeping up-- Thoughts are words and words are...

For anyone interested: Life In Squares is on BBC 2 tonight at 9pm, that's Monday 27th July. Exploring the lives of the famous Bloomsbury group, the free-thinkers, who went against the grain and lived a bohemian life style. Artists and writers alike, their lives were far from perfect, yet they came together to produce some wonderful work. Definitely a must see for any budding writer or artist.

Frank Tuohy (1957 [1970]) The Animal Game The Animal Game is Frank Tuohy’s first novel, published in 1957 and out of print now. Think of Graham Greene. Then think of Frank Tuohy. I’d guess you’ve heard of the former and not the latter. I hadn’t heard of him either, until I read his story Live Bait in a collection of short stories selected by David Miller, That Glimpse of Truth. 100 of the Finest Short Stories Ever Written. We’ve all got our...

It’s been thirty years since I watched The Breakfast Club. I truanted from real life and took a step back into Shermar High school where it’s always Saturday detention in 1984. The Simple Minds hold play with a number one both sides of the Atlantic, Don’t You Forget About Me? The only thing I could remember about the original was Molly Ringwald and one of the other detainees admitted they didn’t need to be in detention but they’d nowhere else to...

In Their Own Words is a celebration of the variousness of contemporary poets living and writing in the UK today. 56 poets talk about their own poetic voices and their work. Essential reading for anybody who cares about poetry. In Their Own Words: Contemporary Poets on Their Poetry, Edited by Helen Ivory and George Szirtes I can’t imagine someone who has no interest in poetry even picking this book up, so to say that if you enjoy contemporary...

It’s been a wonderful week for poetry and prose with writers using innovative techniques and genres. Story of the week goes to love-writing for powerful experimental short fiction. Staccato sentences, visual disturbances on the page and a tragic central story successfully conveys a man’s mental health. love-writing takes risks with her work and this one’s definitely worth it: http://www.abctales.com/story/lovewriting/little-white-box It’s a two...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b063lywk/imagine-summer-2015-5-rich... I didn’t know it but I like Richard Flanagan, even though I’ve not read any of his books. Grandson of illiterates and descended from criminals transported to Tasmania, his father revered books but to be an author was not something he expected. A drowning accident in which he seemed to understand for a moment the interconnectedness of all things changed that. He continued...