Poet | Radio DJ | Author 

Book 4

Vote:

1. Me & Myself - p12 - Mayar Akash (3rd)

Review:

"I read this poem over and over and over and over.  It still unsettles me, it feels almost out of body, transitional, fading-but-clinging-on.  The author appears desperate, literally so.  To go to such a place and to have him take you with him is... yes, it's unsettling but at the same time enlightening and powerful".

You can find his work in:

Book 8 (2022)

1. Mariupol Mother, p47

2. The Basic, p48

3. Land of plenty, p49

4. This changes everything, p55

5. Cash for lies, p56

Vote:

1. This Time - p43 - by Mary Fletcher. (1st)

2. Safari Evening - p97 - by Angie Butler (2nd)

Review:

1. "If it is true (and I think there is a good deal of truth) that pain can bring forth our greatest work, and if as we know, dementia is the cruellest of diseases, then that might go some way to understanding how the author of this beautiful but heartbreaking poem was able to so concisely and so gently describe what she was going through.  I love the delicate precision of the descriptions and that although the perspective is always that of the daughter, she is attempting to comprehend the confused orientation of her poor mother.  She has completely laid herself bare and allowed us to glimpse her loss on an extremely intimate level.  What that relative pain and cruelty does not allow us to understand however, is how the author summoned the courage and maintained the rationality to recall it.  That is her gift to us, and to herself.  It is extremely generous and moving".

2. "Authentic and totally original; you just know that the author was somehow able to make extraordinarily vivid conscious or subconscious site notes.  Those details of the sight, the smell, the sounds and the entire atmosphere of the rapidly changing scene from dusk to dark are so well done.  This is brilliant work".

Book 9 (2023)

1. Painting by numbers, p84

2. Sagres Sunset, p87

Vote:

1. The Legend of Port Quin - p42 - by Res Burman (5th)

Review:

"I wasn't aware of the tragedy of Port Quin and after reading various accounts, I returned again to the poem.  It says a great deal of an author who has the fortitude to write an emotive and deeply sensitive account of such a well documented real life catastrophe that scarred an entire community, and I suspect that he has a personal connection to this terrible event.  Whether or not this is on a physical or a purely emotional level I don't know, but either way it is a very touching and well crafted piece".

Book 10: (2024)

1. Legacy p65

2. Conflicted Coexistence p67

3. It's complicated p68

4. Walls p69

Vote: 

1.  Elaborate Beauty - p16 - by Errol Powell (4th)

Review:

"Through the perspective of a blank mind...  What I find remarkable here, is the author's ability to simultaneously declutter his mind in order to totally immerse himself into his environment, whilst at the same time maintaining the cognitive apparatus to record how that degree of vulnerability impacted him.  This is a great work on many levels".