Dear Brian, I fear you are scamming us. These creatures don't even exist. With Rumpkin and Zoff you're flimflamming us; there's not one real beast in the list. The detachable brain of the Farfeloo and the Hurkle's long tongue are hilarious, but I'm calling it close-no-cigar for you and your faux varmints many and various. The Quembling who mates with a scarecrow? The Trilph who elopes with a flea? You go where some writers don't dare go, which is fine by a lowlife like me. But think how the minds of our youth might be warped if they read verse like this, Gloopum ugly and Snidget uncouth. Reconsider such critters. Cheers, Chris. -Chris O'Carroll Brian Allgar has created an inventive and witty anthology; an alphabetical collection of verses featuring the most extraordinary, imaginative creatures, mostly pretty vile and with a sting in the tail, such as the slug-eating Drangler and the Blathersnick who steals children's pocket money. The poems deserve reading and re-reading, for as well as being laugh out loud funny, they are also very clever indeed. Let's hope this collection is the first of many. -Sylvia Fairley Brian Allgar, long a respected name among fellow-entrants in weekly or monthly literary competitions, delivers in The Ayterzedd a virtuoso avalanche of comic poems. The Ayterzedd, rather like Google, sees all, knows all, and delivers information willy-nilly as 'an endless speech' - an alphabetic recital of weird and wonderful beings that readers will recognise as belonging to the classic English nonsense-verse tradition of Lear and Carroll. Wordplay and versatile, imaginative mind-stretching combine to picture a parallel universe of the alien and bizarre (and in some instances the disgusting). Most of the creatures presented are purely fabulous. Others, like Hoppy the outraged rabbit, can be familiar ones in fantastic situations. The entry on the Millibrand, who bigs himself up but ends 'bagged and borrissed', is a tragicomic side-dish of political satire. It's a fun run all the way to the monorhymed entry on Zoff (plus a Postlude). If you don't laugh, it's not Brian; it's you. -Basil Ransome-Davies
