A version of the little article below first appeared on the Carcanet blog in April 2024, to coincide with publication of my fourth poetry collection, Come Here to This Gate. Why am I posting it here, two years on? Well, I’ve made a few changes to it, so there’s that. But I am also hoping to whet your appetite for my new book,
It’s because you performed this at me, before an audience of surely at least thirty or so, in a style that can only be described as poem-as-haunting-lap-dance.
I’m still traumatised/sickeningly aroused/terrified by this git, as you well know.
Ha! Is that because you are (a) obviously very lazy but (b) happy to take the long route (in your running shoes, natch)?
It’s because you performed this at me, before an audience of surely at least thirty or so, in a style that can only be described as poem-as-haunting-lap-dance.
You didn’t give me twenty quid, and I served you for longer than the standard three minutes. I am the haunted one.