Liz Lochhead: What she read.....

Published on Wednesday 19 January 2011 23:25

The poem which she read at the event:

Poets need not be garlanded; the poet's head should be innocent of the leaves of the sweet bay tree, twisted.

All honour goes to poetry.

And poets need no laurels. Why be lauded for the love of trying to nail the disembodied image with that one plain word to make it palpable; for listening in to silence for the rhythm capable of carrying the thought that's not thought yet?

The pursuit's its own reward.

So you have to let the poem come to voice by footering late in the dark at home, by muttering syllables of scribbled lines - or what might be lines, eventually, if you can get it right.

And this, perhaps, in public?

The daytime train, the biro, the back of an envelope, and again the fun of the wildgoose chase that goes beyond all this fuss.

Inspiration?

Bell rings, penny drops, the light-bulb goes on and tops the not-good-enough idea that went before?

No, that's not how it goes.

You write, you score it out, you write it in again the same but somehow with a different stress.

This is a game you very seldom win and most of your efforts end up in the bin.

There's one hunched and gloomy heron haunts that nearby stretch of River Kelvin and it wouldn't if there were no fish.

If it never in all that greyness passing caught a flash, a gleam of something, made that quick stab.

That's how a poem is after a long nothingness, you grab at that anything and this is food to you.

It comes through, as leaves do.

All praise to poetry, the way it has of attaching itself to a familiar phrase in a new way, insisting it be heard and seen.

Poets need no laurels, surely?

Their poems, when they can make them happen - even rarely - crown them with green.