insertponceyfrenchnamehere's blog

Posted by airyfairy on Fri, 31 Oct 2025 OOOH! Lots of lovely spooky stuff on the site this week! Hard choices for the Picks, but here they are. Story of the Week is rask_balavoine's 'Wobbling between this and that'. I loved this for its humour, its surreal atmosphere, and its genuine creepiness: Wobbling between this and that. | ABCtales Poem of the Week is Turlough's 'Early Lateness'. Very few people could successfully combine hard boiled eggs...

The Rialto Nature And Place Poetry Competition 2026 The RSPB and The Rialto are additionally working with BirdLife International, the Cambridge Conservation Initiative and the University of Leeds Poetry Centre. There’s a fantastic range of prizes on offer and prizewinners will be invited to read their poems at an event withMona Arshi at CCI in summer 2026. The closing date for entries is midnight on 1st April 2026. As well as offering poets the...

I'm very pleased to announce that Ewan Lawrie's third poetry collection is now available. Here's what he says: Third-time lucky? Maybe not. I have a new collection of poems. Available in all formats, [Shouldn't that be all three-mats?] from today. It's a nice looking book, the cover almost looks professional [It isn't, I did it]. The Paper Over The Cracks is here (link is external) . Anyway, have a look, looking costs nothing. If poetry's not...

A very big thank you to everyone who's contributed to ABCTales this week - you are what makes our site so special. In difficult times we need humour more than ever and my choice for Poem of the Week goes to Lou Blodgett for his brilliant 'I Believe in Frogs'. https://www.abctales.com/story/lou-blodgett/i-believe-frogs Our Story of the Week goes to Beanzie whose work in progress, now called My Dinosaur Era is going from strength to strength. Here...

Posted by onemorething: Our Story of the Week is Turlough's wonderful Finding Fionnuala. It's a fabulous read. https://www.abctales.com/story/turlough/finding-fionnuala Our Poem of the Week is JupiterMoon's beautiful and evocative mother hill. https://www.abctales.com/story/jupitermoon/mother-hill Our new Inspiration Point is here: https://www.abctales.com/inspiration-point-ip Have a great weekend.

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Story and Poem of the Week, with Inspiration Point, posted with huge apologies for the lateness, by di-hard Thank you very much to everyone who has posted their work this week; though making the choice so difficult, it is a great privilege. Story of the Week is this luscious and intense piece by Vera Clark : https://www.abctales.com/story/veraclark/please-follow-my-instructions-y... Poem of the Week is deceptively simple, wonderfully vivid and...

Story and Poem of the Month for September

Posted by airyfairy. Welcome to cold and rainy October! Fortunately there's been lots of splendid stuff on ABC to take our minds off it. Our Story of the Week is Caldwell's darkly funny 'Trump Reads Hansel and Gretel'. As one commenter observed, laughter in the dark is the most precious. Also, the author perfectly captures the tone of his narrator. It's a brilliant response to last week's Inspiration Point: Trump reads Hansel and Gretel |...

Story and Poem of the Week