Owen Bullock
Katikati, Bay of Plenty, New Zealand

Editor

I cannot allow that a poem in your magazine uses the word ‘beautiful’. I censure my students when they use that word. It’s become exhausted and needs to be fed to give it life again, and that’s not the case in the work I’ve mentioned. Yes, it’s true when silver rays touch the water on a grey winter’s day, but the word mustn’t be used as a shortcut.

snub-nosed dog
remarkably
un-beautiful

a gaggle of ladies
discusses
trim & lite

reading
he corrects his ex's
apostrophes