Assemble this in eight straightforward steps.
Start with a fish stock, made the day before.
The driver has arrived but, sadly, drunk.
We'll need some disinfectant for the floor.

Ensure all surfaces are clean and dry.
There's been a problem, Madam, I'm afraid!
We'd better have the manhole cover up.
Apologies, the doctor's been delayed.

I'd love to bring a friend, he's so depressed.
They've put you on the camp bed in the hall.
There's just one table left, perhaps you'd share?
I know it's midnight, but I had to call...

On my blog I run a project called the Author Almanac - articles to commemorate the birthdays or anniversaries of significant authors.

How did I get here? How can this happen? Who’s in charge of this mess?

Ted Hughes's ‘Bayonet Charge’ joins the chorus of writers looking for answers.

https://a-levelenglishlit.uk/2026/10/28/28-10-ted-hughes/

(and of course, some of you might realise it was Sylvia Plath's birthday yesterday: there's an entry for her, too - based on the poem, 'Elm'.

hi everyone, I just started recently getting into poetry and I was wondering if there are any recommendations for poetry books, poets, or how-to poetry books that can help guide me on how to format poem and overall just get a better sense of how to write a poem? thanks!

Seen in "Light verse from the floating world: an anthology of premodern Japanese senryuu" by Makoto Ueda.

Additional info regarding the poem as it's followed in the book:

In the government’s eyes, this and other five senryu in the sequence had gone too far. He was arrested by the authorities; a few months later, he died in jail.
Censorship became even more severe after Japan entered World War II in 1941. No work of senryu, or of any genre of literature for that matter, could be published unless it explicitly promoted the government’s wartime policies. The end of the war in August 1945, therefore, came as a relief for most senryu writers. Their reaction was immediate. Nearly twenty senryu groups were founded, or resumed activities, between August and December of that year.

I am not a professional translator, but off the definition of mogu (the verb of which moida is the past tense; i.e. to pluck (especially by twisting from a tree)) I believe plucked would be a more faithfully visceral translation than turned. Additionally, kaeshi is more returning than sending.

Also, just something I learned by looking up the word maruta for adding to my anki deck: during WW2, Japan's notorious Unit 731 would refer to their human test subjects as maruta (logs) as well.

Above the quiet dock in mid night,
Tangled in the tall mast’s corded height,
Hangs the moon. What seemed so far away
Is but a child’s balloon, forgotten after play.