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...

Hey, I have published a small poetry collection on amazon, called Inner Nature. The theme is centered on inner and outer environments, some of which are written from the perspective of nature, while others are based on past personal challenges, and ends with an emphasis on unity and light. Several of the poems have appeared in various anthologies over a ten year period. Want to thank abctales for the confidence boosting cherries! Thanks, Donna.

Gavin Francis tells us of his love affair with islands and maps. And he traces his addiction to a district library in Fife he visited as a child aged eight or nine. How his little fingers traced patterns over atlas and archipelagos ‘as if reading Braille’. As an adult he had to choose between studying medicine, or becoming a geographer. A romantic notion to which I say, you’re a fucking liar, but hey, we all tell fibs. It’s how you tell them...

I don’t know how Ian McVeigh got the name Clank, but he was the Clank Gable of Dalmuir, only he seemed to pop up everywhere, like God or the Devil. I hadn’t, for example, been in the John Rea’s snooker hall in years (obviously, before lockdown) I turned around and Clank was standing behind me. I went to the Dropp Inn and Clank was playing pool. Later I headed to the Mountie and Clank Gable turned up. Clank didn’t as much stalk you as wear you...

Another week in paradise - oh well, at least we have writing and reading to help us through tough times. Thank you to all of you have contributed this week - you do more good than you know. Poem of the week is a dark one - but anxiety is running high and I think many of us can relate -many thanks to London_Calling for Run: https://www.abctales.com/story/londoncalling79/run We've had a few darkly funny stories this week (big thank you to...