Friday 3rd October

  

On The Verb tonight, talking to Ian McMillan and guests about ‘work’, poetry residencies and storytelling. As usual with radio, there are things you forget to say, one of which, in my case, was on the subject of my father-in-law, who has just suffered an aneurysm. I’ve spent a lot of time this past week in the Royal Infirmary in Liverpool, and watching the medical staff going about their ordinary, day-to-day offices (saving people’s lives, relieving their pain, etc), I thought about that line of Auden’s: he said that, in the company of scientists, he felt like a slightly shabby curate who’d wandered in. I have the same reaction whenever I’m anywhere near doctors and nurses. The work they do feels heroic and urgent when put next to any scribbler…

 

Which isn’t to talk myself out of a job. Ian asked that classic thing: do you ever admit to being a ‘poet’ to strangers? It’s difficult, being asked what you do, and loads easier to simply lie and say you work for the Inland Revenue, or (Auden again) that you’re a mediaeval historian. But imagining a world without any people – artists, writers, musicians – to imagine it, to give it back a version of itself that might help us understand or tolerate or question the material everyday doesn’t feel too good, either. At least, I suppose that’s what I tell myself.