Plot and Counterplot, my own second collection, is in the HappenStance shop. You can buy it from here via PayPal, or by post, or go to the Shoestring Press website and purchase using their downloadable form. One of the poems inside is also available as a PoemCard.

John Lucas's Shoestring Press is publishing a new books of poems by me, Plot and Counterplot. Arrival of the volumes is imminent, perhaps (or perhaps not) in time for Cromer and Sheringham Festival, where I'm reading with Helen Ivory and Jehane Markham at the Shorelines event on Friday night (29th October).

One man's laugh is another man's groan. Not everybody likes Ogden Nash (though I do). Not everybody rolls about at Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Tales (though I do). T S Eliot's cats never got half the publicity of 'The Waste Land' and Ruth Pitter's case for The Comic Muse has never really been heard.

Kate Scott's pamphlet is out and about. Escaping the Cage has a gorgeous cover design. The poems inside look innocent enough at first, then knock you off your cosy chair when you're least expecting it.

There are new pamphlet reviews on the website! This has been slower than usual because of the rampage of publications going on in this little corner of the world and because of me fighting with the Inspiron machine (which has empowered, but not inspired me). And there will be more soon. It would be nice if I had had review copies from Faber's new pamphlet imprint. Needless to say, none have arrived here . . .

You think it won't get you but it does. It does.

I remember an occasion when my son was eight years old. He was so enraged with his Sega that he shrieked and hurled it across the room. It crashed into his father's hi-fi.