Punters like me had better watch out. Linda can harvest stories from the patchwork beyond the counter.
Counselling makes good first lines as she pulls pints and makes notes. Publication will follow.
I’d tell her poetry gave me great stories. Here’s one. I applied for a Civil Service scholarship when I was
nineteen. A grumpy interviewer saw on my CV that I liked poetry. “How would you rate WH Auden?” he
snarled.
“Not very highly,” I responded. He blustered purple and shouted “What? What? Why not?”
“Auden has great first lines,” I said cockily, “but every other line is like another first line, so his poems are
incoherent. It made him bookish, but poetry should be accessible, written to tease.”
The old boy had a go at me. I quoted Auden in rebuttal, and we ding-donged until I said: “Hang on. This
seems like an ambush. I expected an interview.” I didn’t get the scholarship. It turned out the interviewer
had written a book about Auden.
I’d tell Linda she has a great journey ahead – Festivals, Open Mic, other poets, recommending poems,
finding lines for your own solace. Stewart Henderson’s poem, How to Speak Love in a Storm? helped me
when a friend died recently from rapid cancer. We’d a couple of hours to reminisce. As I left, we shook
hands and he said: It was a pleasure knowing you. It was the terminal handshake that rocked me, still
does. This stanza speaks to that conversation:
How to speak love in a storm?
means finding the right inflection.
Not offering words and hollow prayers
but walking backwards with you
into your abandoned years.
Pulpit Pub in Old Town for Open Mic, Wednesday 29 July at 7:30. We’d a lovely group last month. If you
feel brave, read a poem!
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