Episodes

  • Episode 9: Falling Off a Log (a love poem)
    Jun 19 2025

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    Write a poem, and you can do whatever you like with it. You can make it for everyone, or, as in this case, just for one very special person.

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    1 min
  • Episode 8: I Took Wine
    Jun 14 2025

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    I went out to dinner on Friday 13th. I’m lucky I did.

    This is a poem I finished a few minutes ago, it is now Saturday 14th.

    It’s probably a first draft. If you see it next week, or tomorrow, or at noon, it might be different.

    My wife is away, I fear I am turning feral, and unused to behaving in company.

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    2 mins
  • Episode 7: Keep Off the Grass
    Jun 12 2025

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    This tries to explain why I went 50 years without writing poetry. Although it is true, I am not sure who was telling me not to. It was possibly myself.

    My brother is not gloomy as an adult, though he was a bit miserable as a child, at least once I was born.

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    1 min
  • Episode 6: The Shopping List
    Jun 9 2025

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    A cheery tale of domestic abuse. This is not a rare phenomenon among elderly couples, but is always shocking when you see it. Not always actual physical violence, but verbal abuse and financial control are common and not hard to spot if you know what to look for.


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    2 mins
  • Episode 5: Valentine’s Day Poem 2025
    Jun 7 2025

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    Sometimes love is soppy, and so are love poems. The Written Word Group had an open mic meeting on Feb 14 this year and I wrote this poem for my wife who I first met 25 years ago. she liked it, and I hope you do and yes, it is a bit soppy…

    Feb 14 was also the anniversary of the first poem I wrote in adulthood. A poem that won an upgrade on a Virgin flight from Miami.

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    2 mins
  • Episode 4: On Tripping while Carrying a Bottle of Brandy
    Jun 6 2025

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    I won a bottle of brandy on a tombola and owned it for about a minute before tripping and smashing it beneath me. I lay for a while in a pool of brandy with large shards of glass. It could have been serious, but it wasn’t. A friend drove me home to change and I started this in the car. I finished it just as the do was ending. It could have been much worse.

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    1 min
  • Episode 3: I Like a Poem that Rhymes
    Jun 6 2025

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    I like poems, and sometimes I like a poem that rhymes. What I have always hated are rhyming couplets, two lines, same rhyme, restricting your thoughts, sounding like a nursery rhyme.

    This poem is made up of more than twenty of the cursed things, but I hope you don’t notice.

    It also contains an almost rude word, but I hope you’ll forgive me and blame it on the boogie, or on Michael Jackson anyway.

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    2 mins
  • Episode 2: Power Cut/Vlad’s Game
    Jun 6 2025

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    On 28 April 2025, Spain and Portugal had a huge power outage. This poems explores the way in which, although we all had the same power cut, everybody’s experience of it was unique.

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    3 mins