Authors Electric

Some years ago Bob Newman had a poem published which included the word ‘rescous’. It isn't in  First Frush , but there are lots of other clever and funny poems in there. The poem concerned was a sestina, with the additional complication of anagrams for the final words which are repeated in a different order at the end of each line. The poem was spotted by   George Chowdhary Best who was part of a committee deciding on which words were to be dropped from the OED. George produced the poem as proof that the word was still in current use. It was subsequently retained. This is the poem plus its introduction: (with permission). "Rescous" is, or was, "the illegal recovery of one's own goods after they have been seized by bailiffs but before they have been impounded". When they are recovered after they have been impounded, the crime is not "rescous" but "poundbreach". A few years ago a report from the National Consumer Council recommended...

When I’m wearing my tutor hat, I blithely tell poets that they’ll gain a lot by writing short stories and learning about narrative and structure. I tell short story writers that their dialogue will benefit enormously from writing a script. And I tell scriptwriters that having a crack at poetry will hone their language skills. I also tell students that the form should fit the idea – some ideas are too long and complicated for anything except a novel, others too short for anything other than flash fiction. Some are too visual for anything other than a stage play, others too sound-based for anything but a radio play. But it wasn’t until I read Manifold Manor , by Philip Gross, that the point of poetry sank in. At the end he says, “Really, the difference between poetry and prose isn’t to do with lines and rhymes. Ordinary prose can tell you what has happened, but poetry can make it happen to you now .”             For decades I was ...