Hotch Potch Literature & Art - Issues Issues: current and past

Hotch Potch 5.1 is out, and I have a full-length story in it! www.hotchpotchliteratureandart.com/issues. The story is titled "Labyrinth".

Stunning

Maybe there should be separate coffee shops for people who want to think and people who want to talk.

Current main pleasures in life: saunas, hot chocolate, enjoying Diana Wynne Jones' Howl's Moving Castle (and sequels) with my youngest.

We celebrate Black History Month in our school (in the UK) for the whole of the Autumn first half term, September to late October and we end with a Black History pride parade all around the school 💗just to cheer you up 💗

Anne F. Walker, Ink and Ink and Flesh and Length Settling In Unbelievably small roomette and a lounge car full of light. Full of people, fields, the bay the delta. Just stepping off and...

Anne F. Walker, Ink and Ink and Flesh and Length
robmclennan.blogspot.com/2026/02/anne...

Every time I write a prompt for AI I include a word limit for its response.

I like how the owl is sitting on a post the way owls actually do sometimes

I had the best idea recently. I wrote the prompt I wanted to use in my notebook, and then I used my own brain as an AI. Like, "Give me 5 alternative plots for what could happen next."

I have just realised that peppermint tea, under some circumstances including a slight cold, smells like pepper!

Same.

My 7-year-old: "What's the point of a pencil?" Turned out he was being serious. "Why don't we just use a computer?"

Special needs teacher. People ask: "You must have to deal with some really difficult parents?" Somehow that always gets to me. Those parents go through a lot to end up being judged as being at fault for their children's needs!!

Middle aged poet Hannah Floyd at a reading. Location is a hipster cafe with art on the walls. She wears a red shirt and black jeans. She has one hand in her pocket.

Poetry reading @hotnumbers.bsky.social went ok. The vibe was great, a mix of ages and a wide variety of styles.

My immediate thought was "ancient pregnancy testing stick".

I can attest that you have liked the robes for as long as I have known you. Consistency is key 🗝️

Feeling oddly nervous about Thursday: my first booked-in-advance open mic since before COVID. Not sure I have the wardrobe for this.

I'm just sorry I have been so useless at keeping up with your output!!

My husband handed it to me while we were at the dentist 🦷. I spent the next 45 mins exclaiming and photographing the pages. The receptionist must have thought I was cuckoo 😜

A hardback copy of Twilight of the Godlings: The Shadowy Beginnings of Britain's Supernatural Beings by Francis Young. The cover has a faint picture of a woman's face with ringlets, a long flowing gown, and a kind of foliage crowning and surrounding her head: it is perhaps part of a stone sculpture. I am holding the book in the dentist's waiting room.

Didn't know that there may have been a pre-Christian belief in a "chthonic otherworld"... this book "Twilight of the Godlings" a fascinating cauldron of information @drfrancisyoung.bsky.social

Like Defying Gravity Hannah Floyd and the Inherited Leap of Uprooting

Like Defying Gravity: Me chatting to Gail Schwartz, editor of Hotch Potch Literature and Art, about leaps of faith: substack.com/@hotchpotchl...

God had the book of life open at PLEASURE and was holding the pages down in one hand because of the wind from the door.
For I made their flesh as a sieve
wrote God at the top of the page and then listed in order:

Alcohol
Blood
Gratitude
Memory
Semen
Song
Tears
Time.

“There’s always a next right thing to do.”

The stories are great but y'all need to see those storytelling artworks. No paywall.

Stuck in bed here since 4 o clock clock time.

A page showing an illustration from Victoria Chang's book "with my back to the world". It shows a faintly printed poem which has been scribbled on with rounded fake writing using a calligraphy pen. The scribble has lines and a title. Above the book in the picture are two charging cables which cross each other.

Reading @victoriachang.bsky.social in the small hours, soaking it up. Maybe if I soak it up I could write like this. Poems that make you say "oh my god". & tell such truthful lies. "I have cut eight lines off this poem for no/ other reason except that they were lies. Perhaps all lines/ are lies."

A hardback copy of Victoria Chang's "With My Back to the World" sits on my knees and is propped up by the little table in front of my seat on the train. Also on the table: a brown bag with the remains of my dinner, and a glass water bottle.

Reading (for the second time) @victoriachang.bsky.social 's "With My Back to the World". I love the way these poems inhabit the artworks they describe. But I also love the moments of distance: "I realized that I needed to/ return on a day when I too could rope off my sadness."

How exciting!!!

Hotch Potch Literature & Art Volume 4, Issue 2

Unbelievably, I have had a second drabble published in:

www.hotchpotchliteratureandart.com.

This time last year, I didn't know what a drabble was. Apparently, a drabble is a very short fiction, 100 words or so. Like a dribble. Hopefully not drivel.

Monster by Dzifa Benson on a coffee table with a stylish earthenware teapot and a chunky mug

Current read: Monster by @dzifabenson.bsky.social . It's phenomenal. It's like attending a stunning multimedia exhibition - but it's a poetry book.