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 N

nowt

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

“Nowt” is a Dialect word, especially associated with northern England, meaning “nothing” or “nought.”

Detailed Definition
In poetry, “nowt” can give a speaker’s voice a regional, informal, or working-class character. It is a traditional northern English form of “nought,” meaning nothing; its meaning depends on context, since it may refer to having nothing, doing nothing, or—in a phrase such as “nowt except”—to no outcome other than something stated. Poets may use it to represent authentic speech and contrast ordinary language with elevated or official diction.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Wilfred Owen’s “The Chances,” a soldier lists the possible outcomes of going “over the top”: “Scuppered; or nowt except yer feeling mushy.” Here, “nowt” means “nothing”: the soldier says that one possible outcome is nothing worse than feeling “mushy,” or frightened and emotionally shaken. Owen’s use of Dialect helps create the voice of an ordinary British soldier speaking bluntly about the dangers of war.
Additional Notes
“Nowt” is particularly associated with northern English Dialects, including Yorkshire and Lancashire speech, though it may appear more widely in British informal usage. It comes from “nought” or “naught,” older English words meaning “nothing.” A related Dialect word is “owt,” meaning “anything.” The contrast is memorable: “owt” means anything, while “nowt” means nothing. In Owen’s poem, Dialect spellings such as “’e,” “an’,” “t’other,” and “nowt” are deliberate. They establish a colloquial soldier’s voice rather than indicating incorrect English. Do not confuse “nowt” with “not”: “nowt” is a noun or pronoun meaning “nothing,” not simply a negative particle.
Also Known As
Naught Nothing Nil Not Anything
Skip to main content