Living Letters - a column by Link Poetry Correspondent Maurice Spillane

I was in the Albert Hall recently for a wonderful reading of letters that varied from humorous to shocking. As we left, we bemoaned letters we’d never saved.

I’ve no regrets about clearances - except for two.

When I was 12 in 1961, I spent three months in the Irish-speaking Gaeltacht. Letters from my mother (I can only spare ten shillings this month) and my grandfather (you’re brave and it’ll stand to you) and special letters in Irish to a headmaster (it was read to all the classes). 

All precious - but they disappeared, probably in a rubbish clearance.

My other regret is the loss of an eight-page letter from my eldest daughter when she was an Erasmus student in Italy. Luckily, I published a poem about it. Here’s an extract:

 

Your letter was like the first draft of a poem,

running with flushes, tripping around buttresses,

bouncing with subplot and mixed tenses;

glass-splashed like rushed varnish on a window-frame.

You were in a hurry.

 

It was such a letter,

And only such a letter could leap from you

And burst brazen like water up a swallow hole

And drench us both.

 

www.mauricespillane.co.uk

 

Pulpit Pub in Old Town for Open Mic, Wednesday 30 September at 7:30.