John Stocks writes about...

A Poetry Landmark

Thanks Don,

The preview looks good as always. Many thanks to you and the team also for my inclusion in the Quarterly Review. I really enjoyed the editorial too... very inspiring... had me racing to find my note book for another scribble.

I have been spreading the Bewildering Stories word over here, and it should feature in the next issue of The Inky, the local Sheffield writers’ rag. Despite extensive global searches I have yet to find a better managed, or researched on-line site.

i have also contacted the UK poetry society suggesting that they include it on their poetry landmarks of Britain site... the Britain bit may be a sticking point. but where is Mediaopoliis, the capital of cyba space?? Hope this does not make more work for you.

An interesting week over here. On Monday the normally benign River Don reclaimed its flood plain for the first time in a hundred and fifty years; homes were flooded and lives lost and we were forced to walk home in waist deep water along the high street. Air sea rescue were pulling people up from the centre of town. Some INTERESTING videos of this on YOUTUBE.

Then to the capital to dodge nail bombs planted by doctors employed by the national health service, next week a plague of locusts over the white cliffs of Dover?? Hey ho.

Best Wishes

John

Copyright © 2007 by John Stocks

Thank you very much for the kind words, John, they’re much appreciated. And congratulations to you for the outstanding poetry, which we’ve been very pleased to publish.

Bewildering Stories might be a poetry landmark of Britain? Now that would be an honour, all right. I think you and Doug Pugh have definitely staked a claim.

You have our every sympathy for the disasters: a flood, then terrorists in health care... what’s an honest foreign doctor to do these days?

They say trouble comes in threes. After a human and natural disaster, what next? You may well be right: a Biblical plague can’t be ruled out. However, a supernatural or spiritual disaster seems to be all that’s left. Armageddon? Televangelists? John Nelson Darby come home to roost 150 years after he was laughed out of England and inflicted his bizarre form of fundamentalism on a credulous U.S.?

As we always say, “Activate all talismans of good fortune.” But this time, voodoo might come in handy...

Don