[Jerome Betts]

LUPO for December 2017 is now up, completing its tenth year and fortieth issue with a bumper number, not middle-aged spread, despite a lot of cheese.

Eratosphere stalwarts among the contributors include Brian Allgar, Melissa Balmain, John Beaton, Jerome Betts, Cally Conan-Davies, Ann Drysdale, Max Goodman, Robin Helweg-Larsen, Susan McLean, Martin Parker, Basil Ransome- Davies, Jennifer Reeser, Robert Schechter, George Simmers, Susan de Sola, Catherine Tufariello, Gail White and new members David Alpaugh, Damian Balassone and Janice Canerdy

Among their topics are cheese, smartphones, Stanford elites, joint suicide, hamsters, voles, earwigs, holiday squats, laughter, inspirers, and did I mention cheese . . .?

www.lightenup-online.co.uk (Note. Melissa's link in following post no longer works.)

[Melissa Balmain]

A delightful issue, Jerome--honored as always to find myself in it, mingling with so many poets I admire.There doesn't seem to be a link in your message, so here it is: https://www.lightenup-online.co.uk/i...-december-2017

[Gail White]

I've been having a great time with this issue. Thanks again, Jerome.

[Susan McLean]

I've enjoyed it, too. I particularly enjoyed the section on cheeses.

Susan

[Jerome Betts]

Thanks Melissa, Gail and Susan, and for your contributions, and further thanks to Melissa for sticking in the link which I tend to forget to do.

I'm glad the urge to be cheesable was feasible and brought in some names familiar to Esphere but new to LUPO.

[Cally Conan-Davies]

Thank you, Jerome, for my part in the cheesy chuckles! Susan's photos are particularly, glamorously cheesy. There's something in cheese that's inherently funny, whether it's hard cheese or smelly or runny. Don't you think?

Cally

p.s. I'm in the midst of exploring the entire issue now -- I'd only been sent the Cheese section -- and I have to say there's a trove of marbled dark/light verse in here—I just read Melissa's 'In-Box', for instance. Thanks to all those who had a hand in putting this together!

[Jerome Betts]

Thanks, Cally. Glad to have a second Australian aboard. I think we can stand a few more without the LUPO corpus risking ozzification.

' marbled dark/light verse . . . '? Ha! A van that has been occupying the parking space in the road outside my house for the past several days bears the legend S. J. Dark Ltd . . . Emergency Lighting. There ought to be a verse in that . . .

[Susan d.S.]

Thanks all, and especially, thanks to Jerome. I agree with Cally. There is something inherently funny about cheese...the embarrassment of milk, caught in the act of something. Marbled light/dark is just right. I found Melissa's poem especially touching.

[John Isbell]

- Wensleydale?
- Yes.
- You have some?
- No. That's my name. Wensleydale.

Half-hearted apologies for quoting Monty Python...