Introducing Irregular Features!

The inestimable Dr Fulminare of (he of Sidekick Books fame/infamy) begs to alert all merchants, mountebanks, bards and footpads to his latest experiment, Irregular Features, a sporadically updated, peer-reviled journal of poetry goings-on, in which the following reactions and imbalances may or not occur:

• Things to Make and Do - games and guides to coerce you into such unatural practices as generating 10,000,000,000 pantoums in but clicks, using fridge magnets to constuct your own poetry blurb, folding your own stanza-stimulating origami swift, crafting the images of famed poets from dots and much more.
• Poetry Top Trumps - pit the varied talents of Ted Hughes, Frank O' Hara, Getrude Stein and Giorgos Seferis against each other in a duel to the (probably car-crash or oven-related) death, with further metersmiths to be added.
• Woe's Woe - a directory of suffering, for when 'blue' won't cut it and 'out-of-sorts' is too infuriatingly non-specific to pinpoint exactly what kind of pain you are feeling. You will be introduced to such diagnoses as Faughstalkery, Lentopression and Repustress and before long, Dr F vouchsafes that you should be able to accurately diagnose misery at a good ten paces!
  
• Plus Articles, Reviews and Interviews with poetry types, as the benevolent Doctor permits.

Dr Fulminare requests contact with any sharp-witted types who, upon spying this literary litany, feel they too may wish to contribute ingredients, or, tangentially, anyone with staunch amounts of scentless sulphur for sale at a reasonable rate. Contact him through the Devil's Wiretangle at drfulminare@googlemail.com

Speech Rack Ignition

You may have read about my arm injury in the report on the Fox launch party. It's still not right unfortunately - but one of the joys of it is that I have had to to learn the magic of computer speech recognition in order to write.

While it generally works pretty well (and it gets better as it gets used to how you speak), it is fun what a mangle it can make of things - especially if, instead of adopting a robotic Hawkingesque monotone, you speak into it with a bit of passion. Such as you might when reading out literature (or "this trip chef victor chow" to use the software's preferred phrase). So I tried reading out a few passages.

This for starters:

and they're reading never officially things to say thanks to the safety
on the palate busted pilot just a mime chambered all
and his eyes of all the scene of the daemon that is true meaning
and the LAN manager who's treating France's should draw
my soul from out-of-the lines for him on the floor
Shelby listed never mall.

Hold the mouse over here to see where this is from.

Here is another:

April as a congressman free to
our necks out of the gentle and mixing
them into such a stir
until point that's thing
that I can win tickets will cover
the effort to get full senate seat in
illicit life after Judas.

Answer here - though if you're at all familiar with it, the first word should give it away.

It does throw up some interesting phrases - there's something nice about the almost tautological "mixing / them into such a stir" and I'm really looking forward to my illicit life after Judas. I hope it involves the LAN manager from the previous effort.

Finally:

now enjoying
of Austin the east to use Younglove
the minors and friends in the milk of their duties
to strive to be interested in one can you say to draw
of certain lot Clinton your sister's
nothing untoward
nothing
nothing
nothing will, of nothing speak again
in happiness I am I cannot keep
my heart and my mouth I love your majesty
according to Michael and memorial no less.

Here is the answer - the speech recognition seems pretty good at picking up the word "nothing" at least. Actually that one was pretty close - and a little less interesting for it. I hope it doesn't learn too quickly!

----

Just wanted to add - in case you fancy having a play, Word 2003 has speech recognition built in (go 'tools > speech to set it up'), as does *cough* Windows Vista. You can also download a simple application from here as part of the Microsoft speech development kit. I don't know what's available for free for GNU/Linux or Macs, but if anyone does an informative comment would be much appreciated!

You're suppose to use a good quality microphone (preferably USB) but as the object of the enterprise is for it to get as much wrong as possible, it probably doesn't matter.

FuseLit cryptic poetry crossword!

As interactive crossword compiler software currently goes for about £35, we at FuseLit have taken the graph paper, black rollerball and Tippex approach to puzzlebuilding. Just print off and ponder!

Apologies in advance for the sheer tenuousness of some clues. Otherwise, have fun!

Across

1 Another name for 12 across (5)

5 In a sticky situation with line breaks? (10)

8 Ted Hughes is pretty smug about this character (4)

11 Shocking haircut for Mr May? (4,1,5)

12 Flying Scottish bovine? Must be the season (5)

13 This Beat seems excited, then disinterested! (5)

17 See 27 across. (3,6,5)

21 According to his surname, this poet is a clever guy. Perhaps something to do with the grass (7)

23 Harry Mathews discusses maoism in his French past (8)

25 See 28 across. (5,6)

26 See 9 down (5,3,5)

27 (and 17 across) The colour of an inept wizard, according to Herbert (3,6,5)

28 (and 25 across) Put the bird with the blooms for this New Zealand poet (5,6)

30 (and 14 down) Ascertain whether this New Generation poet is adept at the use of raincoats (4,7)

31 (7 down) This poet found initial controversy with the Roman five (4,8)

32 Up Pompeii's Nauseous wrote this kind of poem that started a stink (3)

33 That's it. We're banning The Raven! (9)

Down

2 This San Franciscan's most famous non-poetic work had a lot in common with tarmac (7)

3 Pound's secret language leads to surprised words (6)

4 (and 20 across) Stein really loved her remote control (6,7)

6 See 18 down (7,6)

7 See 31 across (4,8)

9 (and 26 down) A Christmas song related to “Rockferry” artist? (5,3,5)

10 A saint who eats rusks will give you a scouse poet (4,6)

14 See 30 across (4,7)

15 Frank O'Hara's favourite meal (5)

16 Come on Ms Turner! Even you can write formal poetry! (7)

18 (and 6 down) Sounds almost like this devil was into custard and body modification (7,6)

19 See 26 across (3,5)

20 See 4 down (6,7)

22 French poet sounds bad-ass (7)

24 A basic drive that's sick gives a rural poetic style (5)

26 (and 19 down) He took us to Donjong Heights. Not as dull as his name would suggest (3,5)

29 First name of the poet who wanted to die a young man's death (5)