Many people have read Dostoevsky’s poem The Gambler. It’s clear that there has always been a link between gambling and poetry. In fact gambling has been a source of inspiration for a number of novels and poems. There are many examples when gambling is used as a metaphor for life. Other times a writer will literally transport you straight to the casino table. There are many tragic stories about gambling addiction. There have been people who have gambled away their entire fortune and ended up in poverty. At the other extreme, there have been reports of people winning large sums of money through ..read more

Through works like the classic Auld Lang Syne and other famous pieces, Scotland’s beloved son Robert Burns has perhaps done more than any other artist to promote the Scots language around the globe. Some of it may be incomprehensible to many, yet his popularity and influence has lasted for over 200 years. His poem To a Mouse is thought to have inspired John Steinbeck’s seminal novella Of Mice and Men, published in 1937. Despite this, according to recent research, Burns was encouraged not to write in Scots as it was thought it would limit his audience. Dr John Moore was a travel author and Scot ..read more

Dante’s Divine Comedy has influenced numerous artists. However, an exhibition commemorating the poet’s 700th birthday features the work of a far more modern devotee. Ai-Da the robot made history by becoming the first robot to publicly read poetry created by AI algorithms. Ai-Da is named after computing pioneer Ada Lovelace and was designed in Oxford by Aidan Meller. She read Dante’s epic three-part narrative poem and then used her algorithms to create her own reactive work. For this, she drew on her data bank of words and voice pattern analysis. Ai-Da performed the poetry at Oxford’s Ashmolean ..read more

Poetry and rap have a lot in common in terms of styles and tenets. The boundaries and parameters between rap and poetry are fluid and open. Because their functions and origins are so intertwined, it is difficult to totally separate the two when defining their relationship. Some regard rap as a natural progression of African American oral traditions. Significant links can be seen between rap and talking blues and oral storytelling. People evolve, and music changes with them but the two forms are more closely tied than most people realise. Rap is just a form of modern blues. If you listen to tho ..read more

Originally posted in November 2020, today we celebrate National Poetry Day with our all time greatest hit – a poem that went viral across America proving how important Webzines are for both emerging and established writers. Congratulations to Nigel King. The Poetry Village The Good Friday Sheep The nave echoed with bleating. Sheep crammed into pews; shaggy Wensleydales, tidy Suffolks, Blue Texels, Portlands, Border Leicesters. The air was thick with lanolin and fresh droppings. Ryeland wethers nibbled on the hassocks, a Herdwick Ram scrambled up to drink from the font. The sheep looked ..read more

Greatest Hits – Number Two The Poetry Village Salaryman I might have been fourteen when I overheard a neighbour talking to my mother, about how her husband had been passed over for a job in the bank and him by far the best candidate. I didn’t know what it really meant, but somehow I looked at him in a duller light, this man I was in awe of, partly because they had all the stations before us and partly because he seemed to know the answer to every question, his didactic commentary a soundtrack to all our TV viewing. I began to notice him on later buses in the morning, his suits less shar ..read more

Greatest Hits – Number 3 The Poetry Village MEMENTO MORI After the Selborne yew came down the parish plundered the whole thing like a car sacked for spare parts: branch and bark became an altar screen or a silent hanging cross; pilgrims and druids and day tripping drop-outs came for whatever small scraps remained: a well-preserved lance of wood, seven berries, the stamen’s yellow and toxic shroud. Consummatum est. Another scourged Son stripped of his seamless robe; his woven crown. For a few more days, it tried growing back through the hollowed ghost of itself but those torn-out roots w ..read more

Greatest Hits – Number 4 The Poetry Village Schrödinger’s Mouse Your love of my raspberries has resulted in this late evening walk in headtorch, to hedges of hazel and blackthorn, far enough from home to foil ideas of return. Aware of owls ripping through moonlight, I kneel in damp fescue and sedge, clutching this tilt trap of quantum uncertainty; mouse or no mouse? that is the question. The trap gate opens. You see me for the first time, holding the moment in beads of black polished glass, small body wedged, feet splayed, heart racing, a quiver of tense, anticipating whiskers. And in t ..read more

Greatest Hits – Number 5 The Poetry Village Mist It seems I have sealed the sensations of your touch as down payment of an address we could never own or occupy. White heat and the ensuing calenture have lapsed. Emblems of affinity are like the sky: always there. Intimacy breeds indifference, in its own way it keeps us knit. Sanjeev Sethi is the author of three books of poetry. He is published in more than 25 countries. Recent credits: The Sunday Tribune, The Cabinet of Heed, Amethyst Review, Talking Writing, Packingtown Review, Abstract Magazine, and elsewhere. He lives in Mumbai, India ..read more

Hydrogen Bonds If you write in water hydrogen bonds are disturbed, ripples shy away from your intention. These intermolecular forces form, break, reform, diverting molecules. Such electrostatic forces cause cohesion— forming spheres of water dripping into the bowl of fontana della Barcaccia. Some molecules are those you heard as you lay in bed. Water is endlessly recycled, Earth history preserved in every drop. Today flowing over my fingers specular under Roman sun plinking in memory of that leaking boat. Water from your body could have become part of this fountain below 26 Piazza di Spagna ..read more