Edited and designed by one of my favourite poets on ABCTales, Rosa Cruz/Annest Gwylim, a new e-book/anthology for the Poetry Kit called 'Flowers in the Machine' has just been launched today, It's free to download, and contains some very good work by published authors (including Rosa) that you won't find elsewhere. It's at: https://www.poetrykit.org/pkp/flowers.pdf

Big congratulations this week to Sim for a long awaited return to Ribbentrop's Chair - some of the best life writing I've read on ABCTales, and to longrunningspatula for 'Promenade Diary' which reminded me of how much I miss the sea - especially at times like this. https://www.abctales.com/story/sim/jean-ribbentrops-chair https://www.abctales.com/story/longrunningspatula/promenade-diary I'd like to add a recommendation this week - the blogposts...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08rg0bd/glasgow-1967-the-lisbon-lions?suggid=b08rg0bd Narrator Rory McCann had an easy job, everybody knows the score. Celtic were the first British team to win the European cup. Inter Milan had scored from the penalty spot in seven minutes, cancelled by an equalising second-half goal by Tommy Gemmell and a late winner from Stevie Chalmers. ‘You’re a legend John. You’re a legend.’ Bill Shankly famously said...

Meridel attempted to get The Girl published in 1939, six years after the end of Prohibition in the USA. The Girl is a girl from a Midwestern farm which is falling to bits who gets a job in St Paul, Minnesota serving booze and Booya in a speakeasy. The Booya is legal and sounds yum, it is 'an elegant stew of chicken and veal and beef and every kind of vegetable and you cook it all night and day very, very slow and it gets to smelling even out on...

Winner of the 2017 Academy Award for best documentary this five-part series is an investment of time. The premium dividend is it shows how America is polarised around issues of class and race. Karl Marx’s dictum that history repeats itself the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce is apt. OJ is the poster boy. A black all American boy that went to a white college, became the All American hero used by Hertz to sell their cars. ‘Go OJ,’...

Stephen Dunn Sweetness: Staying Alive Just when it seemed I couldn’t bear one more friend walking with a tumour, one more maniac with a perfect reason, often a sweetness has come and changed nothing in the world except for the way I stumbled through it for a while lost in the ignorance of loving someone or something, the world shrunk to mouth-size hand-size and never seeming small. I acknowledge there’s no sweetness that doesn’t leave a stain,...

I watched this on BBC iPlayer. It was shown over three consecutive nights and was based on the Rochdale child sex scandal. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08r8pvh/three-girls-series-1-episode-1 http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08r8s12/three-girls-series-1-episode-2 http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08r8vp5/three-girls-series-1-episode-3 There is institutional cover up, issues of class and racial bias. A blackness of themes that...

Posted by Philip Sidney on Fri, 19 May 2017 There's been a flurry of wonderful peices inspired by May's Poetry Monthly theme - out of the blue, I've even written one myself...but it's Parson Thru's touching poem that takes to the skies this week as Poem of the Week. https://www.abctales.com/story/parson-thru/4-group-raf-bomber-command Noo chose the Poetry Monthly theme, and wrote a prose piece on a similar theme - I dare you not to get teary...

There's been a flurry of wonderful peices inspired by May's Poetry Monthly theme - out of the blue, I've even written one myself...but it's Parson Thru's touching poem that takes to the skies this week as Poem of the Week. https://www.abctales.com/story/parson-thru/4-group-raf-bomber-command Noo chose the Poetry Monthly theme, and wrote a prose piece on a similar theme - I dare you not to get teary when you read it. It's our story of the week...

Finally managed to create a shiny new YouTube channel for ABCTales, and to upload some video from last week's London Reading Night. Big thanks to Judith for the filming. We only managed to get a few readers, but I hope it'll give you all a taste of how brilliant everyone was, and next time I promise we will film the whole thing! I hope you enjoy them: https://youtu.be/iQjjUst0fwc https://youtu.be/-_X29RN_K-I https://youtu.be/-qRAG5YW9bI