SHOUTING INTO A VOID
A vengeful Technology has apparently foiled all my attempts to get emails through to the USA. I do not understand what has happened, but , whatever it is, it has been spectacularly successful.
At least three contributors from the USA may be surprised to find their items appearing in this Issue -- items which, though I had earlier told them would appear at some future date, now appear here without any final confirmation having been received from this Editor. Cyberspace is, however , filled with my multiple efforts to contact these contributors and with my requests for them to confirm their agreement to publication in this Issue.
Please accept my apologies for whatever it is that I have done, or not done, to offend the techno-gremlins. If you are not happy to find yourself in this Issue please let me know quickly and I will delete accordingly.
It could also be helpful if USA-based contributors would confirm the email address at which they would like to be contacted in future. I will then seek to send replies by both the “Reply” and “Create mail” channels and see whether there is still a problem with one or both.
COMPETITION 9 RESULTS
. . . will introduce you to a Teddy Bear covered in melted cheese, biology catching up with Christina Rossetti, T S Eliot as a truly precocious brat, Shaxpere’s unreliable spelling, . . . and to several other trying moments for budding young poets.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Welcome to a first appearance here by Basil Ransome-Davies who, together with Bill Greenwell, has long exercised a stranglehold over a variety of light verse competitions, thus incessantly depriving many fine wordsmiths of the prize money which they had regarded as a racing certainty. But this is an Editor who bears no lasting grudges -- simply admiration!
Among the pieces from some of our regular contributors we find a musing pig, porridge, road kill, Ogden Mash on potatoes, push-button poetry, the bolas spider, an unexpected reason for the banking crisis and a wedding guest whose ill luck suggests that she may well have killed an albatross. Enjoy them all.
Please keep your Submissions coming in, comments too. Feedback suggests that we really are beginning to raise the profile of lighter verse, even if, to date, Fabers has not yet swamped me with requests for all your contact numbers. But I live in hope.