Bruce in Nashville

Bruce is back home, but still writing up his journey. Here’s his account of Nashville, and his encounter with untamed music and the joys of Beale Street:

Our road trip has been completed. We have been home a month, having travelled 7,985 miles. There has been a lot to do to catch up and repair what went undone at home while we were travelling. Now that I have some time, I wish to return to my growing travelogue in order to fill in some of the gaps.

On our trip west, we hit Nashville on a Friday night. It would have been easy enough to drive around it, but I insisted we drive in. Ms Keogh was reluctant, tired, wanting to continue on until the next Hampton Inn where she could bathe and sleep, needing to recover from the long drive. I could not bear being so close to this iconic town and not venture nearer. Pleading with Ms Keogh, she acquiesced to allow me to just drive through. I was taking it one step at a time, hoping by inches that if she saw things first hand, it might spark her interest. The next step would be to convince her to park and visit a club, where I would drink and we could listen to live country music.

Two poems, one dog

It wan’t until I’d put the issue online that I discovered that two of the poems in our Snakeskin Cats and Dogs special were actually about the same dog.

This is Benji, who shares the home of Sarah Rowland Jones in South Africa. Fiona Moore visited, and promised to write a sonnet about Benji. Meanwhile Sarah had written a piece about one of his less appealing habits.

Fiona kindly sent a photo of Benji, which I have now appended to both poems. He looks such an innocent dog…

Cats and Dogs

The Cats and Dogs are online, and a very lively bunch they are, too.

This issue has been fun to edit – though selection was difficult.  Plenty of high-quality runners-up, who I hope won’t feel too discouraged at not quite making it.

Apologies for not blogging for a while – I was away for quite a bit of the month. Fans of Mr Bentzman will be pleased to know that he arrived back home safely. I think there are still further tales to be told of his travels. For his essay this month, Bruce did not contribute to the Cats and Dogs theme (but instead has given me the excuse to include a video of some thirties big band jazz). Those who would like to read Bruce on the subject of dogs, however, should look at a piece he wrote for Snakeskin many years ago,  his obituary for Boris, the huge Newfoundland who  for a long while was part of his family.

Please note the announcement that July Snakeskin will be a short poems issue – eight lines maximum. I’ll write more about this later.