The desk has an abandoned look about it. It’s no longer mine, not that it ever was mine to begin with: I was sitting in, I was a temp. That bundle is the printer’s proofs of the autumn issue of Poetry Review, with a few yellow stickies peeping out – there’s always some of those (imagine being Arthur Fry, inventor of the Post-It note) – and the magazine has now gone to press.
Coming home, as I was going down the long escalator at Holborn tube, I saw a poet I haven’t seen for months ascending on the up-escalator. We went for coffee. Why hadn’t I asked him for a poem? A poem of his, a good one, would have fitted this issue fine. Too late. But overall, no regrets. It’s out of my hands now, and in a couple of weeks’ time will belong to its readers.
Meanwhile, next Saturday, the 8th: the Free Verse 2012 Poetry Book Fair at Candid Arts, London EC1V 1NQ – another thing about to be put into the world, and that will belong on Saturday to whoever comes. Please do.
Grace Paley (1922–2007): ‘Then the flowers became very wild / because it was early September / and they had nothing to lose’
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