Ah the merry month of August, and the leaves are sweetly photosynthesising glucose.  And, you know, a wise man once said to me: "Is that one yours or mine? I can't remember".  It was his day off.  

Tying these two strands neatly together in a seemless segue, August is often thought of a time of holidays. A time to relax, take a deep breath, take stock, and lazily scream at the kids, the taxi driver, baggage handler, the tour operator and the hotelier; or, if these tough economic times are biting you, the walls, the world, and these tough economic times that are biting you.

It is, very much, in this spirit that we have cobbled together a much smaller version of our Untitled Ezine that is the features section of Write Out Loud.  But don't worry, we aren't resting on our laurels.  No, quite the contrary in fact: we are resting on our laurels.  A bit.  Whilst doing so, we're taking stock and re-evaluating the principles on which this Ezine was founded.

Simply stated, those principles were that the zine itself has to be a constantly innovating assortment of silly, fun-packed features created in written and audio media, balanced with lively, but informative articles on the craft of poetry creation and performance. 

Due to natural wastage of talented features editors who have become jaded over time either through presence of reader response or presence of non-reader pointless gibberings, we are looking to recruit new features people. We would also like occassional contributors who have read the submissions guidelines or glanced at individual features and realised that we really don't want your poems (unless you have written us a nice set of horroscopes as poems for every star sing for the month), but would love to publish your scholarly articles on poetics, or your critical analysis of the poetry scene in your area or your critical analysis of your own poetry style (including excerpts of poems that illustrate your point).

If you are interested in running an innovative feature each month, or producing Viz style photo stories done as poems or even just contributing to existing features, please have a read of the Ezine or the submissions guidelines and get in touch on dermot@writeoutloud.net