argh, late for work

The autumn issue of Poetry London is launched; it seems your correspondent has not totally disgraced herself with her review of Presley and Merwin.

The Oxfam Life Lines 2 CD is also now launched - and available from all Oxfam shops for a paltry £4.99 - and Ms B is correspondingly told that she sounds fine on it: like herself. As long as she doesn't have to listen to it that's fine with her. (No, no: I will get up some courage over the weekend!) The reading last night was splendid, once the speeches were finished.*

Danny Abse started the evening off, reading in his beautiful voice - one of the beautiful reading voices that seem to be disappearing, as no one any more seems to have the particular tone necessary for that kind of modulation. Anyway, he stood there all small and handsome and white-haired and really very old now, with the largest pair of reading glasses I have ever seen, and to be honest by the end of his first poem I was all choked up. It was a lament for his cousin Sidney who lied about his age to join the Army in 1940, & was killed... but also much more than that. Stunning poem, and a wonderful beginning to the evening. Especially after the speeches. And most of the rest of his poems were very sexy, which everybody liked.

Elaine Feinstein read about her husband. A fabulous set from the performance poet Attila the Stockbroker; Abse himself was a treat to watch, sitting in the pew ahead of me chuckling at Attila's fevered rants. See, why is it too easy to assume that people will only like things that are kind of like them? Attila for his part finished with a paean to Abse and Feinstein which I found touching.

I should say that these two very different poets - the erudite Welsh doctor and the Clash-inspired agitprop crowd-pleaser - both seemed to embody, in their readings, fulfilments of our need for spoken baury. This sounds pretentious: but what I mean is that words are lovely, they are malleable and made up of elements like sound and meaning and carry little frieghts of association, and so are different ways of speaking - sentences themselves, and rhyme, and rhythm - are exciting - and both these poets demonstrated all that last night. They were both unafraid of seriousness and also of humour.** It was the best reading I've heard in some time. Maybe since Ciaran Carson a few months ago.

Young London newlywed and Jack Wild lookalike*** Wayne Smith started the second half with a fab little set, well-delivered and wryly amusing - clearly nervous to be in a church instead of a pub (this had also bothered Attila)... Sujata Bhatt had come from Germany, and read some haunting imagistic poems about lizards that I really liked, and John Hartley Williams - currently poet in residence at the Wordsworth Trust - finished the evening off - beginning with a rousing poem called "Near Dove Cottage," about a polar bear. His hair so snowy white and his eyes so glittering that he even looked like a (very cheerful) polar bear.

Now what? I'm reading for Oxfam in St Albans on November 24th. Ages away. Something tells me I should get down to work and send some poems out into the world...

My Bookaholics Guide to Book Blogs has arrived (thanks, postal strikes - that only took two weeks). I must look at it! Ditto the new Poetry Review. It is proper autumn now, the leaves are yellow and are swishing around my feet when I go outside. And cold. I need a coat, but am so skint it's no joke, and the buses were so useless last night I finally had to get a cab from Kings Cross - a shocking £20 to Stoke Newington - and even then, only got in at 1am.

I feel as if I hardly even remember my kids.****

I have a huge spot on my lip.

Now: what to wear today.

* Seriously: out of ALL the senior people at Oxfam, they don't have one who can do public speaking? Instead they sent along a trustee who said she finds poetry very relaxing to listen to while she's ironing, or falling asleep, and who droned on for so long, in a hideous monotone, that we were falling asleep. Furthermore, her excitement at all the good work Todd Swift has done to bring poetry to Oxfam seemed a bit odd as I have never seen her at even one of the Oxfam Marylebone readings over the past four years. You have to wonder. When she finally shut up my friend turned to me and said: "So, is your poem for ironing to, or falling asleep to?"

** There was one point, though, where Attila ended a satirical poem by breaking out of the satire and making, agitprop (that word again), the point (which was I think about asylum seekers and everyone in the room already agreed anyway) that he had been making with the satire. It was very disappointing that he hadn't trusted his satire to do its work - it was more effective.

*** editing in: I was going to say this originally but for some reason fastidiously didn't like to; however I now see that Tim Wells has put a picture of the Artful One on Facebook, entitled "Wayne Smith," so I suppose it's now all right. If Wayne doesn't like it he can blame Tim.

*** I had a small but heartfelt conversation about this with someone the night before; you just can't be in two places at once, and you can't do everything! I must try and get them all here for Sunday lunch...