Cover: Photo (c) J. G. Betts. Knocker of Keats House Museum Teignmouth Devon.
Issue 45 of LUPO, the first for 2019, has emerged from its cocoon to navigate the transition from winter to spring with the Anglo-American quintet of Jean L. Kreiling, Jane Blanchard, Martin Parker, Katie Mallett and Liza McAlister Williams. It then proceeds to consider supermarkets, litter-picking, a London encounter, bad audience behaviour, birds real and imaginary, Jane Austen’s novels, a famous wheelbarrow, Russian trolls, a bull in a proverbial place, mice, cats, choughs, Matthew Webb, epi-lexis and many other topics, until Melissa Balmain bottoms the bill with a . . . er . . . that is to say . . . er . . . pungent piece of Pujollity.
Performing in the four Intervals come the galloping gallimaufry or cast of thousands (well, twenty-six anyway) of Damian Balassone, Jerome Betts, Kim Cherub, Martin Choules, Terese Coe, Diana Devlin, Peter Emery, S.O. Fasrus, Paul Fraleigh, Daniel Galef, David Galef, Julia Griffin, Midge Goldberg, Hannah Gross, Robin Helweg-Larsen, Jean L. Kreiling, Bruce McGuffin, L.A. Mereoie, Martin Parker, Tony Peyser, Mae Scanlan, Michael Sutton, Thomas Tyrrell, Robert West, Liza McAlister Williams and Paul Willis.
Babbling brokenly, the polyglot survivors of the multilingual or macaronic morass of Competition 44 cast aside their dictionaries and await the applause of an international audience, in the shape of Joanna Bird, C.R. Edenhill, Julia Griffin, Elizabeth Horrocks and L.A. Mereoie.
Leaping into the LUPO limelight for the first time in this issue are that nimble nine Kim Cherub, Terese Coe, Joe Cullen, Hannah Gross, Derek Healy, Ruth Maus, Michael Sutton, Christine Tapper and June Webster.
But first, as a prelude to all this, though its subject would not wish it to be on too solemn a note, we mark the departure of a dear doyenne of LUPO and the light verse world, the ever-youthful in mind Mae Scanlan.
