Hi All

It wa a pleasure meeting so many of you at the Open Mic in Stanmore library last week.  Especially to meet last month’s winner, Derek Baretto, and this month’s winner of the Barnet Borough Times, Elliott Lever.

Also delighted to congratulate Lisa Cohen, who has won the Harrow Times competition.  You’ll both be published in the paper this coming week.

We had lots of other worthy entries and I’m happy to show just a few here.

Next month our subject is Travel and I need entries of no more than 20 lines by the 26th October.

And here are the poems:

A SPINNING OF TIME by Lisa Cohen

Why are we in a hurry?  What does that achieve?

I wish there was a time machine to slow us down

We are ruled by each hour. Weaving in and out

A tapestry to the testament of our lives

My tapestry of life weaved by magic fairies

Would begin when love shot an arrow into my heart

My first grown up romance.  Time stood still

Capturing the dizzy moments, before melting away

I wrote giggly, spontaneous letters of a besotted teenager

And imagined myself Juliet, but my hero vanished

National Service. No time, Broke my heart

The time machine whizzes on. 1945 to 2017.

Spinning visions of war, victory, Holocaust, the birth of Israel

Sixty years of marriage, two great kids family deaths

The time machine is counting down. Last orders please

Magic fairies are gently lifting me for the last time.

A TIME MACHINE by Elliott Lever

To venture a deep escape

I hopped an uber through time and space

With mobile phone in hand

Escaping to a distant land

To a Chinese temple up steep steps

Beneath the undergrowth of the great reds

To a land of dinosaurs and

Sweet pastures before the great war

Across the corridor where Oswald shocked us all

Into the future-

To cure those sick without delay

To change the course of history

To know the right and the wrong

With the retrospectoscope hope will not be gone

Return to the present in time for tea

With a time machine you can return in glee

A TIME MACHINE by Kusum Hars

As I sit by the window soaking in the sunshine

My mind zooms back to the years in time

When I was in pigtails, a young girl of nine.

A morning in summer , the day is gay

The air is fresh, the wind is at bay

Dew drops on the grass, glistening bright

With the first kiss of the morning light.

Going to school in horse drawn carriages

Is full of fun, for boys and girls of all ages.

Drivers racing with each other hoping to win

Children shouting and making a lot of din.

An evening in summer, still and warm

Sleeping out in the open is the norm

Thousand stars twinkle in the clear sky

As many glow worms glimmer in the bushes nearby

Frogs croak and crickets sing with all their might

The music goes on throughout the night.

Looking for the Milky Way and the man in the moon

I drift off into a dream and sleep to wake up soon

To the magic of another of those fun filled days.

A TIME MACHINE by Patricia J Tausz

'Plug me in, turn a knob

Left for the past

Right into the future I will cast

You, but remember it may cost you a few bob.

My insides are now whirring

Yes, you're going back in time

You're with Shakespeare as he's creating a rhyme

Now alas danger is stirring

You're back to times of war

Perhaps you'll join the Romans or even the Greeks

But none of them your language speaks:

Now what else have I in store?

Yes, now try turning my knob to the right

We're about to shoot into space

There too some dangers you'll be forced to face

It's time to hang on very tight

The ride will rather bumpy

We're now back in twenty-seventeen

No need for you to look pale or green

I know twiddling my knobs has made you jumpy.'

A TIME MACHINE by Jeff Edmunds

A boy made a paper dart, copied from a book of art

He wrote a message inside. He made it well. It flew, cast a spell.

As he watched, the paper transport suddenly found its passport, flew out of the window. Gone...!

The boy, forlorn looked out. No paper dart

The paper dart travelled back and forth in time. It saw power struggles, wars, inventions, great upheavals, heat, storm and cold, but still it flew on

Each time it stopped, someone wrote on it and sent it on

It was made to fly and enthral, but alas, alack it didn’t come back

Then one still morning, the boy awoke in his bed. He’d forgotten paper darts, had a mobile phone instead

On his messages there appeared a paper dart. He looked up, gave a start as a freak gust of wind blew the curtain in and with it, his paper dart. Could it be? “Impossible!” said he. Yet, he felt there could be no doubt

As the boy opened it out, there was his message and written, below, many more. The messages were strange, from past and future, foreign lands, in many colours, hieroglyphics, different hands…

The boy made a paper dart, copied from a book of art

He wrote a message inside. He made it well.  It flew, cast a spell

What was the boy’s message inside? That’s for you to decide…


So please enter this month's competition on Travel and I look forward to hearing from you.

Have a good month

Judy