Ten years ago, when I was studying for my A-Level in English Literature, a friend told me that the year below us were being taken to a poetry conference -- where poets including Carol Ann Duffy and Simon Armitage would be reading some of their work. Although their work wasn't being studied in class our year, some gentle persuasion got us included to go to the conference -- purely for pleasure.
I remember the confusion many of the students had that I would choose to go, that I wasn't studying these poets but instead read them for pleasure. I even had copies of their books that I had brought along in the hope of getting them signed.
At the conference, I sat in the front row with one of my friends -- who was writing a book of poetry called Lusus Naturae. She was one of those people who didn't just write poems, but compiled them into books, and gave friends readings from her collection.
After Simon Armitage read his poems, I told this girl that I was going to see if I could go "backstage" and meet him. She dismissed the idea. She said he would already be outside, smoking a cigarette in the rain, and would be gone in minutes. Just the same, when the conference compere came back out to check something, I asked him to take me to meet Mr Armitage. And he did. Simon Armitage seemed shy and probably a little bewildered by this breathless poetry fan who was telling him was a big, big fan he was -- and I asked him to sign my copy of Book of Matches.
Instead of disappearing into the streets of London for the rest of the day -- as was normal behaviour for these conferences -- I sat and listened raptly to all the other poets, until my favourite, Carol Ann Duffy. The sublime Ms Duffy is now the poet laureate. I meant to write a post back when she was awarded the post about what this meant for England, and poetry, that all hope was not lost when an openly bisexual single mother from Scotland could the two fingered salute to the stuffy old men of the establishment. But at the same time I couldn't see her writing poems on demand for royal weddings and anniversaries.
Anyway, I was taken to meet Ms Duffy like I had been before, and she in turn introduced me to the lovely UA Fanthorpe. I was asked if I wrote poetry myself. I replied I did, but probably that was going through a dry spell. I later became much more prolific at university, writing poems that were funny or sad or sarcastic and reading them half drunk and semi wild at open mike evenings on both sides of the Atlantic ocean. I hope sometime in the near future to find an open mike night in London and maybe dust off some of the better pieces.
Today I was thinking about the Alexei Sayle short story "The Mau Mau Hat" -- where a poet is kept from his work by a younger poet called Emmanuel Pollock (a reference to Coleridge's unwelcome visitor). In the story, it is customary for older, established poets to have their younger contemporaries over to their houses for tea and cakes, which is how the man Pollock and his hat set off a chain of events and come to be such a distraction for the protagonist.
I still wonder if I could write to Carol Ann Duffy and request that I come to tea with her and discuss poetry. I could also try writing to Alexei Sayle -- since if it's not a real custom then it's his idea, and even though he isn't a poet, he is funny and clever and brilliant and one of the finest minds of his generation.
I could tell him about the epic zombie novel I'm meant to be writing.
