Alas, yes.  So here are this year’s entries.  I’ll be honest, a few of these are a bit shoe-horny, where I had more than one idea for a word, so one of my verses would have to find a new home…

Remember as ever, these are just meant to be an idle doodle, not Pulitzer-bait.  They’re also trying to be fun, so let’s keep it light.  Also returning from previous years are the the random artworks that barely relate but are a good showcase for some interesting finds.

So, here we are once more, in the season of mist and mellow fruitfulness. But for poems to bear fruit, they must successfully avoid Mr Block…

And so I once again misappropriate the trusty-old list of thought-prompters provided by the good folks at Inktober to shake-out a few short pieces from the noggin over the coming couple of weeks. The important thing to remember is to not take these too seriously.

The illustrations, incidentally, are quite unconnected to the poems and are simply some works of art I’ve found online that I want to share with you:

Finally, allow me to introduce the strangely Irish-looking Edgar, as voiced by my decidedly London-born friend John Dobson.

Finally, we have an avatar with a real human voice, provided by my good friend Jo Matthews. Thanks Jo !

Young and Byronic, Hereward is the moodiest virtual poet since Speak & Spell

Green-eyed and red-haired, and worth every byte, here’s Ebba !

Introducing my latest almost-convincing avatar, Athelstan !

Introducing cyber-poet Winifrid, here to read two of my verses –

Having completely failed to make my previous passing, I have decided to mark my half decade in style (is that a quintade ?, or is this the epitome of Unnecessary Latin ?)

Thanks to recent advancements in AI, it is now possible to create avatars of never-existed people in Midjourney, and voices of never-spoken tongues in Prime Voice, and then get the former to speak the latter thanks to D-ID. Although you won’t get to see that last part, as videos can only be included for premium WordPressers – after all they have to keep us riff-raff out…

And so, all this week I shall be unveiling my new Readers, who are definitely attempting to scale the slope out of uncanny valley and almost sorta kinda sound perfectly natural ! Well, as long as the poem doesn’t contain a question mark, as they can’t change their intonation. And as long as you don’t mind them sounding thoroughly middle class, as the British voice samples all tended towards the RP – which is a pity, as I always intended for my words to be read in an ‘Educated West Country’ accent.

However, saving the best for last, I have persuaded a couple of friends to read for me as well, and you can heartheir delightfully-human tones at the end of the week.

Can it be, October already ?  Then time to grasp at the accidental inspiration for some short poems.  Over the coming week you can enjoy some vol-au-vents prompted by the official titles, all of little consequence but hopefully of some enjoyment.