The Shuffle last night went so well, and was well attended too, especially when we consider that The Poetry International Festival was taking place on the South Bank (well not literally on The South Bank, that would have been a bit cold) at the same time. We maintain a high level of quality control, and if I say so myself, that really does pay off. I enjoyed every single reader last night, and that’s not something I often say after a reading. I had nice chats with most of the readers too - poets can be such great company.

 

My own work is slightly - ahem - peripheral at the moment, with half term on the go, and kids who need love and attention, but I am reworking old poems and starting to build some new ones. I miss the steady focus of regularly sitting down to write poems, and I hope to get back after the half term break.

 

Meanwhile the Magma magazine saga continues, as the last bits of the launch plan are put in place, and we sort out website content and suchlike. It is incredible to me the amount of energy that has to go into producing a decent poetry magazine. If we were all being paid fifty quid an hour, we’d be extremely wealthy people. Even ten quid an hour would be quite a good salary.

 

Anyway, I didn’t hang around after The Shuffle last night because I just had to catch up with the X Factor. I’ve got it bad, I really have. One of my daughter’s friends refused to go out with a bunch of them last night, except for a brief interlude between the live show and the results. So I’m not the only one. Even Robin, my partner, is getting into it, talking very seriously about it, as if it were - oh, I don’t know - really important. But then I suppose it IS really important for the contestants. The loser last night was so paralysed with pain he actually couldn’t speak for quite some time. One of the male judges cried. This is big drama. That’s why I love it.