Chip shops and kama sutra: poetry with a difference, Glasgow-style!

It has been some time since I last wrote about a wonderful local initiative bringing children, parents,  our wider community and the Great Outdoors together in North Kelvin, Glasgow, U.K – The Children’s Wood, which very happily has recently gained charitable status. Everyone around here is delighted with this achievement.

One of the things we can now do is extend our fundraising activities.To this end, The Children’s Wood is teaming up on Tuesday 24th March, 7.15 pm,  with our excellent Oxfam Book Shop, 330 Byres Road, Glasgow G12, which is always willing to support appropriate local initiatives. That diverse and talented group of published poets from the Greater Glasgow area, the Byres Road Poets, are presenting an evening of poetry reading in the above shop to raise funds for The Children’s Wood. 

Byres Road Poets
Byres Road Poets

Local friends, supporters and poetry fans, do come along to hear a rich and diverse mix of versification from Carole Bone – don’t miss her infamous Chip Shop poem; Sophie Agrell – repeating her rendition of that risqué Kama Sutra poem; and Alistair Christie Johnston, man of mystery by choice who simply will not say what he’s reading – till he reads it…

There will be wine, nibbles, and a chance to contribute a suggested  £5 – or more, don’t hold back! – to The Children’s Wood‘s coffers. To continue with these imaginative existing initiatives livening up and enriching the lives of young and old alike in the North Kelvin area, we need funds. Do be generous – it’s a terrific, life enhancing cause.

I know that my many loyal readers and Followers live in different areas of the UK and all over the world, but especially in the USA. Our local initiative here in one area of one Scottish city is an important microcosm of a world-wide movement to get young people, parents, and whole communities together, to get us OUTSIDE, to get us more active, less gadget-bound and therefore more healthy.

So: those of you who are too far away to come and listen to those excellent local poets, why not give a donation – anything you can afford would be welcome – to help us on our way? Click HERE to donate. Many thanks!

We are all part of the ONE: one family, one community, one nation, one world. Let us never forget this, and let us support one another in any small initiatives for positive change.

‘…Mighty oaks from little acorns grow…’

logopond gallery

logopond gallery

400 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2015
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page

Scottish poet Carole Bone: this time, The Voice!

Here are six new poems by Carole, read by her with her usual panache at a recent poetry reading hosted by Glasgow’s Oxfam Book Shop, Byres Road, in the Autumn of 2013. Do have a listen! Any feedback in the form of comments would be welcome. 

Carole Bone
reads her own poems
Carole Bone
Carole Bone

To see Carole’s bio and her publications list, click

Carole Bone – Bio and Publications

Contact Carole at: carolebone@hotmail.co.uk

100 words copyright Carole Bone/Anne Whitaker /2014
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page

Surreal, macabre….yes, that’s Scottish poet Carole Bone!

  • Here are two new poems by Carole, read by her with great relish at recent poetry readings hosted by Glasgow’s Oxfam Book Shop, Byres Road, in the Spring and Autumn of 2013. I’m sure you will agree that she has a distinct feel for the surreal and the macabre!
  • ( please, readers, accept my apologies for the peculiar perpendicular dots on the left side of this page. Try though I might, I could not erase them….my contribution  to the surreal, if not the macabre!)
  • IN MY DREAMS
  • In my dreams I can fly if it takes my fancy
  • There’s a two tailed talking dog called Clancy
  • Who plays Flamenco guitar telling tall-dog-tales
  • Of giant clockwork cats with ears like sails
  • In my dreams I live in a house made of cheese
  • Blow bubblegum bubbles with effortless ease
  • So big that they lift me up-up in the air
  • Did I mention Clancy has electric blue hair?
  • In my dreams time is measured by dandelion clocks
  • There are NO spiders and NO odd socks
  • Doris the Mermaid sings Aerosmith songs
  • Eating anchovy ice cream and egg foo yong
  • In my dreams there are many magical things
  • Bright yellow dragons with duffle coat wings
  • Corkscrew daisies grow fifteen feet high
  • Clancy likes them…. You can understand why
  • In my dreams many things transmogrify
  • But they ARE only dreams, so can YOU tell me why
  • When I wake with Clancy no longer there
  • My pillow has strands of electric blue hair?
  • ON THE OTHER HAND….

  • Books!
    Books!
  • EVERYONE HAS A BOOK INSIDE
  • She s-mothered him till he was forty-five, her precious child,
  • fussing over him, prune lipped and pillow breasted,
  • a benevolent dictator.
  • He simmered like the bubbling fat in the fryer
  • of the family fish’n’chip shop.
  • Three Generations Son!!!
  • He despised it, and her.  The acrid smell
  • of grease and the way it
  • clung to everything.
  • What he really wanted, was to paint a Masterpiece
  • or write a Bestseller or go hot air ballooning
  • up the Orinoco.
  • One Sunday afternoon, he was painting the masterpiece
  • that was the kitchen door and she was prattling
  • ON and ON about potatoes.
  • When it suddenly occurred to him that
  • there was NOT that much
  • to say about potatoes.
  • He saw his life then, peeled and chipped.
  • Deep-fried and wrapped up in
  • yesterdays newspaper
  • discarded on a Friday night, cold and half eaten
  • and he pushed her in the chipper.
  • Then, inspired
  • he picked up his pen and a fresh sheet of paper.
  • Smoothed it carefully.  At last!
  • Fodder for the bestseller!

Carole Bone

Carole Bone

To see Carole’s bio and her publications list, click

Carole Bone – Bio and Publications

Contact Carole at: carolebone@hotmail.co.uk

500 words copyright Carole Bone/Anne Whitaker /2014
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page