A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter C

Clishmaclaver

Dialect
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Idle gossip or chatter; prolonged, empty talk about other people's affairs.

Detailed Definition
"Clishmaclaver" is one of the great comic words of Scots, its very length and convolution mocking the pointless prolixity of gossip. It captures the particular pleasure-in-disapproval of communities where everyone knows everyone else's business, and it appears in satirical and comic verse as a vehicle for social observation. The word's magnificent sound — four syllables tumbling over each other — enacts the unstoppable quality of the talk it describes. Burns and the satirical tradition delight in "clishmaclaver" as evidence of human social vice rendered hilarious.
Example
Example in poetry:
"Clishmaclaver" means idle gossip or chatter; A poet might write: "The town was fou of clishmaclaver — / nae tale too tall, nae fence too haver." to satirise gossip culture; "Ignore the clishmaclaver, lass — / let rumour blow and let it pass." offers stoic counsel; "Her clishmaclaver filled the square / like smoke that thickened up the air." uses sensory metaphor for gossip's spread; "Beneath the clishmaclaver's noise / lay truths too fragile for such joys." distinguishes gossip from reality; "He sat apart frae clishmaclaver's stir, / a man of few words, deep and sure." characterises taciturn integrity
Additional Notes
Clishmaclaver is one of the great pleasure-words of Scots, its very length and rhythmic complexity enacting the garrulous, unstoppable quality of the gossip it names. The reduplicative, tumbling sound of it is almost musical, and poets have used it for comic effect as much as semantic precision. It captures a social practice — the exchange of news, rumour, and speculation — that was central to community life in rural Scotland. For students interested in sociolinguistics and poetry, "clishmaclaver" is a reminder that language does not merely describe social behaviour but participates in it. Compare with "blether" for a simpler synonym, and note how the longer word elevates the concept into something almost ceremonial.
Also Known As
Claver Gossip Idle talk
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