Tuesday 21 March 2017

I Text The Poet Laureate

"Yours, Friday evening, 8pm. Okay?"  is what I texted to the Poet Laureate this morning. I've always admired her, and she's been instrumental in some of the highlights of my life so far, in particular endowing the Roy Fisher Prize.  When I won that back in 2011, I finally came to terms with myself as a poet, even saying the word close to my name on occasion.  But I didn't mean to invite myself round, especially on a Friday night when she will have had better offers already.  There's respect from a distance, there's gratitude, and then there's overfamiliarity.

There's a danger with texting / emailing and so on, of sending the wrong text to the wrong person, or the right text to the wrong person, or the wrong text ... you get the picture.  I did this once before, explaining to one person what I thought about another (who, in my defence, had hurt me) only sending it to the another by mistake. It led to a free and frank, robust and, in the end, very healthy conversation.

As the background to this morning's mistake, I'd meant to text my good friend Carol, as we need to rehearse for our upcoming performance of Still Life.  When I explained to her what I'd done, she texted back LOL!!!!

As for my first text, I'm still waiting for a reply.




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