NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

I'm familiar with Purple Patch and at a fiver for three issues it is a real bargain. The first thing to strike me was the variety of styles which I feel adds richness to the overall production. You will find narrative, humour, imagry, rhyme, descriptive poems, music and some deeply moving pieces.

A fine example is competition winner WEATHER REPORT (about a missing child) by A.J. Cartmel-Crossley. Rain is forecast from start to finish. It really touched me and reminded me of the tragic Bulger case in Liverpool. From verse 1:

	on the news
	another tragic mother airs her fear
	for a vanished child who's disappeared
	wondered [sic?] off, or snatched or worse

	on the news
	reporters clamour, microphones jab at passers-by
	white-suited searchers prod the ground with sticks...

	now senior coppers stage-manage their concern
	and spot-lit parents parade their pain again...

	and grave-faced clergy simper hollow phrases
	florists do good business

	Just wait till you look in the mirror

	you can't remember how you got home
	but you recall a sharp slap in the face
	after groping somebody's wife.

CHICKEN SMILE by Christopher Taylor was moving

	here i am
	an alien once again
	with a note pad and pen
	looking like a relic or a grandparent
	tomorrow I'll come here with my son
	i often do
	he'll wear the chicken smile
	and I'll feel as young as him

	you're a cheeky thing croaking this early
	very much less than perfect pitch

	...
	you got away with it just like
	Michael Crawford in Phantom Of The Opera.

	writing volumes of air is not my style

The last two poems I want to mention are LYING TOGETHER by A. David Brown and DARK SIDE by Belinda Cooke. Brown's poem questions habit and his longtern affair. It opens

	we lie together, and we speak, we lie together

	The paint is always a brown that was once cream
	...
	They must have had mothers — moments
	...
	Where food is always tinned or frozen