Sock Puppet's Summer Fiction Wish List

Not Another Beach Book Bitch?

"The Newsmonger's Niece" by Greenham Swallow (Beddly Hadd, 35p)

Swallow This?

Set deep in the bogs of Westminster, Swallow's latest chirp follows corn merchant Deryck Luckless' search for the ideal incestual tryst. A bevvy of impotent back-benchers, a blind Police Commissioner and four generations of Thames boatpeople aside, Luckless' co-creations are all coarse-wittled, folksy folk, modelled in gnarled driftwood and daubed with yellow ocre and burnt umber. The plot, a potted palmtree Airfix would have been proud of, is sinewy, withered, ashen, cracked and shrink-wrapped in woad. The page numbering is (deliberately?) mixed-up and in several places the reader is asked to rip out perforated sheets and deposit them in an eco-friendly bag (provided). Finally one is left with a strong, mawkish feeling of Arglwydd Mawr!


"Packing It In" by Felipe Rope (Little Brown Jug, £19.95)

The Wrath of Rope

From a belated attempt at fixing (sic) crack cocaine to reminiscences of stuffing envelopes with JFK election bumf, Rope's latest novel is all of three hundred words long. Nevertheless, impatient readers should be prepared for some spectacular yawns. Each word has been meticulously cross-checked against a sub-set of Chinese ideograms, Mayan Codices and the Coney Island telephone directory. Rope, whom The New Yorker reports to be reaching the end of his namesake, has recently given several interviews longer than many of his books. However the torn and frayed doppleganger wafting in the wake of this his final publication is effectively a roaring silence.

"The Brother-In-Law of God" by Sallyman Mumbrush (Shiksa & Goy, 30 shillings)

Blasphemy or Blasted Phoney?

As the old efnic saying will have it, "The goodwife's ambulance is her husband's wheelbarrow" this is a tale told by an Iscariot, a three-times denier of holy writ, a Mammoth of Mammom of Moron. The trouble with this kind of faith-based suspension of disbelief is how you are often left with the feeling that barefaced heresy is itself an inverse form of worship. Meanwhile, to preview the plot: a goat goes missing from the family yard leading to a year long fleece-hunt during which the brother-in-law of God - for whom read, Patriarchal Kid - empties the coffers of many good shekles after bad, till bankrupcy do kick him up the turnip plot. I won't reveal exactly how Mumbrush manipulates the old deus ex-machina device into salving the Prod... except to say s/he does so with all the blots and howlers we have come to expect from his/er quill. Not to be read in public lavatories. Beach ban in operation on the Isle of Man.

"Poignard Pick-Me-Up" by Trucksie Lasse (Madman House, Free-On-Demand)

Linda van Rundstedt is still in bed

Loosely based on the sex-romps of pop groupie and songstress Linda van Runstedt, this quasi-autobiography of life on the road during the early 1970s is about as erotic as a museum dedicated to the Victorian chair leg. Having said that, if nifty turnings turn you on, you may well get your rocks off to Trucksie Lasse's latest horn pipe. As lacking in wholesome graphic sex scenes as "Shifty Fades to Grey", it seems doomed to become a classic. Recommended as a flagrant train-read. Also available in OO gauge.

"Funny Bone Cholera" by Millicent Handle (Lunatic Press, £9.95)

Live Dead!

A history novel or a novel history? Tower of force or tour de farce? Simultaneously set in three different locations of the time-space continuum, this book needs to be nibbled at by the reader like a triple decker jam sandwich garnished with raw onion, horseradish and mandrake root. And having shaken the hand that holds it, the novel then emits a dense cloud of purple smoke which engulfs the wings of the deepest armchair. Whence, as if history itself were become history, it then asks us to believe a new strain of cholera bacillus is the reincarnation of a twelfth century coptic monk come to revenge his people on a uncaring god. Ms Handle's antidisestablishmentarianism is renowned. No doubt this latest book will have many tacky prizes renamed in her honour.

Sock it to ya!

The Complete Pancake

Dangerous as a pancake

In Four Synonyms & A Syllogism

Blind as a pancake

Serving #1: Driving like a pancake!

Pull over, puddin'ead! This lane is for grown-ups with licences. Got an engine in that box, have we? Strewth, I've seen car bombers with more Highway Code.

Right as a pancake

Serving #2: As fat as a pancake!

Q: I say, I say, I say... did you know sugar contains as much as 90% water?

A: No, mate, your knickers are over your head there. Sugar contains 100% sugar.

Hot as a pancake

Serving #3: Room to toss a flipping pancake!

Talk about the low ceilings in Hobbiton, have you seen the chandeliers in the Brighton Pavvy? Dripping with them!

Daft as a pancake

Serving #4: A pancake by any other name...

…would taste as bland, pass the honey, Lemon!

Bent as a pancake

Serving #5: All good pancakes come to an end.

Ah, this one is over! So what good will come of it?

High as a Pancake!

poetry republic
3 members
welcome readers/writers/critics

Books we've read

The Society Of The Poem
by Jonathan Raban

Literary Theory: An Introduction
by Terry Eagleton

View this group on Goodreads »

How-To-Write... a Cheque

...or: cheque this art...

Americans will flinch at the "que" on the tail of this old literary curio. Notwithstanding "diner’s checks” scribbled on napkin by aspiring waiters, or those national-stereotype “Czechs” whose Lightness of Being is Unbearably Not Slovakian, the grand Olde English Promissorie Note has lost much of its currency - and not a few of its currants.

Biro on Bog Roll

A flashed wad of cheques is a rare sight indeed these days of Stephen Fry-by-night, elf-publishing and other stabs of pen. Whether copper-plated on mock vellum or crudely tattooed across the arse of water-buffalo, the original cheque is nothing less than a literary means of conveying value between parties. Except on bank holidays, it may be seen hovering over pools of stagnant syntax, or drowning in the phlegm of newspaper touts.

Echo! Echo!

Letraset on tin foil, Biroed on bog roll, Chinese woodblock printed, iced in cochineal on retirement cake or scratched with blue-black ink from the dregs of Bob Cratchit’s well, all that really matters is latex plays no part in its manufacture. Beware the crossed words “Acc. Payee Only”, which deal a severe blow to a cheque’s social mobility; as do frankings of less than fifty smackeroos by your Flexible Friend. A truly great cheque will have digits running into seven figures proclaiming, for Pity’s sake, the latest Lottoman Empress. In addition to its face value, such a cheque, cleared by the banks, may be framed and flogged off at Sodabuy’s in aid of the smiling polio victim.

Letraset on Tin Foil

Even a cheque contaminated with derivatives of hevea brasiliensis (rubber tree) may have intrinsic value; when, for example, its dodgy payer is a household name. Again, any bone-fed auction house may be contacted to assess the potential. Other examples of unkind payment: shiploads of rotten spuds delivered our way under the Marshall Plan, Confederate Dollars, fake chocolate money, misspelt innuendoes (“earos” for “euros”, “ponce” for “pence” & etc.) and the absolute vanishing of inks.

Tattoo on Buffalo 

Let us leave, buy the bye, the How-To-Writes of "cheque's-in-the-post", "Travellers' Cheques" and "chequebook journalism" for other, more fastidious correspondents to sign off on.

Chinese Wood-Blocked

And proceed, not before meantime, to the "post-dated cheque" so beloved of impoverished students and the absolute bane of slum landlords. Do be careful when passing these delicate notes, if Referred to Drawer they may easily turn to Cack-in-the-Attic.

Never Sign!

poetry republic
3 members
welcome readers/writers/critics

Books we've read

The Society Of The Poem
by Jonathan Raban

Literary Theory: An Introduction
by Terry Eagleton

View this group on Goodreads »

A Shipping Forecast

It's not as though we've never been here before. First there was the opera, then the T-pot (which I bought and broke the handle), and most recently the Netflix mini-series with Gary Oldman and Emma Thompson's cat. No apologies for any lack of origination, except to say, this fanhood has been lifelong; that despite living ex-patria for two decades, I've listened in as regularly as allowed on UK holidays and local Internet speeds.

Only circumstances have changed. Back when, in Blighty, I most recently remember waking up early, damn early, after late-night drinking bouts, listening to the broadcasts between draughts of water, stupefied, head pounding, eyesore, red-nose, sneezing, coughing, scratching arse, praying, Arglwydd Melys, never-again. With warnings of gales in Chromarty, Dogger and German Bight, intestines churned, war having broken out amongst those that suffer on the sea, crying to be heard by Thee.

Nowadays, of course, such blasted drunks are less frequent because of age and pressures of parenthood, living in lands without proper pubs and two hours before Greenwich Mean Time means times are called while England is still in the throes of night rages, late revellers rolling home. At seven AM local, Internet-tuned to Radio Four's anschluss with the World Service, followed at five-twenty GMT by the morning's Shipping Forecast.

I crane with an actor's ear while the weatherperson - a cross between scientist and thespian - delivers the ten minute set piece either as a promising drama school audition or syllable-perfect Gielgudian unflap. On another level, the SF is like playing a hand of patience. Will the reader stumble or fall at those guttural Scottish place names?

Will the numbers, the repetitions, the monotonies and threnodies breakdown in coughs, splutters and over-apologetic frogs-in-throat? Is the reader a young, inexperienced, angst-ridden tenderfoot too eager for a clear round? Is precipitation in sight, or is s/he a case of the aloof, urbane, RP pooh-er of visibility?

A few years back, I stoop to recall, the SF was under threat. It was one of those periodic shake-ups the Beeb goes through when Auntie clears out the cupboards and consigns a new generation to grow up without bloop-eaters. Unlike Mrs Dale's diary or Jack Demanio's clock, The Shipping Forecast sailed on beyond its natural retirement age. Now, even in the age of GPS, we still get our daily fix of solo yachters pouring over their charts in heavy seas while tuned in to the Home Service. Long may she sail.

Hoop-La!

poetry republic
3 members welcome readers/writers/critics

Books we've read

The Society Of The Poem
by Jonathan Raban

Literary Theory: An Introduction
by Terry Eagleton

View this group on Goodreads »

Topical Pomes of Philip LEE

Newtown: a ville in hell

one minute man is going for his gun

the next your friend and teacher fall oh hell

let's hide as if the Britishers had come

it's Johnny marching home from old Saigon

hurrah for macaroni such a swell

one minute man is going for his gun 

the next it's study history on the run 

from second amendment Liberty's knell 

let's hide as if the Britishers had come 

to setting sun and mother nature's son 

the shots a never-ending rebel's yell 

one minute man is going for his gun 

the next it's Bungalow Bill and his mom 

tiger-hunting all-American bull 

let's hide as if the Britishers had come 

defend us Lord against the redcoat scum 

and break King George's mercenary spell 

one minute man is going for his gun 

let's hide as if the Britishers had come

horse-u-eat

it says here

ingredients may vary

more than one country of origin

then

stuff about groundnut allergies

that's a laugh 

nothing confirming 

age of victim sex species 

or 

anything about unnatural decease 

for the record 

even if I weren't in two minds 

inhabitant of more than one country 

and

a time-served vegetarian 

I still wouldn't give a monkey's 

serves you all right 

cheapskates 

ha ha 

respect

Pope Julian's Retreat

good on yer cobber for peddling

the meddles of Bradley Wiggins

or is it Manning

winning geek of the lowdown load

did you expect Swedish customs

not threats of lethal injunction

or is it Muggings

whose ass sang in the comfy chair

man of the bored pretty boy smiles

you shuffled off on women's libs

or is it Manly

doomed to die a second-rate shag

poetry republic
3 members welcome readers/writers/critics

Books we've read

The Society Of The Poem
by Jonathan Raban

Literary Theory: An Introduction
by Terry Eagleton

View this group on Goodreads »

odd of the Liver Bird

odd of the liver bird

by Philip Lee

deus nobis haec otia fecit

-Virgil

eh blue which god vouchsafed this perch

so far above the ships at berth

in fervent scenes of graft or work

and did I plead for such a perk

to stand and squawk for what it's worth

a-skulking here all out to lurch

d'ye ken the gulls on yonder church

St. Nicks by name that comb the earth

like sparrows while in belfries lurk

the nightshift bats none miss the quirk

of early worms for there's a dearth

and precious nowt without a search

but micky blue to whom the beak did dirge

flew fleet and dumbly by the giant's verge

next up a passing heron heard

the windy whistling liver bird

to whom this sounded quite absurd

well hark at you disgusted said

to sit atop of all this lead

whyever don't you turn your head

in heaven's name but drop your guard

that jobless men from bars now barred

may drink to how unjust and hard

life is or like the Coogan kid

step father in that film he did

the time by art and dodge outbid

but so in awe of being over-looked

you'd only boo a goose whose gander's cooked

not so I swear by docker's hook

and don't deserve that last rebuke

nor play the drake to sleeping duck

you kick me when I'm down my luck

don't think I'd baulk to plant this duke

between the bills of any crook

that tried to take me for a rook

he's drunk who thinks a fancy's fluke

has pitched me o'er this pool of pluck

some god it was that passed the buck

from eyrie roof in reign to spook

those seamen who his rule forsook

so on the bird would plead of passing folk

if any of them knew which godly bloke

till late one night the bird awoke

amid colliding coils of smoke

to list as owl his tuppence spoke

with copper claws you craft and grope

a feather-brain on tether rope

and brazen wings you're past all hope

the myth of you is out of vogue

a specious cant your windy brogue

you're but the idol of a rogue

no god gave you this perch the globe

to watch no lord of patient Jobe

but bad king John in ermine robe

with falcon seal this borough he enrolled

in subs for which the barons pledged much gold

a moment's whistling wake was held

then dockers' hooks from decks were hurled

and ancient stories of the gulled

retold their souls from oceans pulled

and slaves transported half the world

to die in chains new lives revelled

as like from kings and queens rebelled

the empire's folk their flags unfurled

and union jacks from yardarms culled

the copper hulks turned rotten hulled

to sink while round the globe they curled

their feathers brained and nuts unshelled

thus godforsaken liver bird was penned

to roost in effigy at pier's end

Sock it to 'em!

poetry republic
3 members welcome readers/writers/critics

Books we've read

The Society Of The Poem
by Jonathan Raban

Literary Theory: An Introduction
by Terry Eagleton

View this group on Goodreads »