I’m at The Southbank centre
this morning and each day this
week except tomorrow. I place a screen print of one of the Head series, by Whitney McVeigh upon the wall of The Riverside Rooms. She’s a
star on Saatchi online. I get some admin done shifting papers like a master
card player.
By twelve noon I’m on the 6th floor of The Royal
Festival Hall in a photo-shoot with Dominique
Brewster. With a one hour lunch
break the shoot lasts two hours. Brewster
is so obviously talented that it’s a pleasure to watch from my side of the
camera.
After this I trawl the London Literature festival brochure proofs
then race over to the literature
department for conversations on changes.
At 5pm I get a call from BBC’s
Newsnight requesting a poem as advice to the new poet laureate. In truth I haven’t
the time. They shall be putting the poem
on their website tomorrow night when the poet laureate is announced.
But within five minute’s of putting the phone down an idea
(!) which out of respect I can’t do anything but write. Eight lines
fall out of me and gather themselves and
whereas normally I would put them in the oven to cook, so the chemicals react
to the heat of time, by six pm I have
pressed send. The poem is called Rest.
Earlier on today I saw Jude Kelly the artistic director who
asked if I was going to the Slambassadors event in the evening . I took this as
a sign to go…I was verging on giving it a miss due to my new York trip the
following day. At 7pm I walk from my
office to The Blue Rooms below the royal
festival hall. It’s the 100th centenary of The Poetry Society who
have chosen this event to be the launch of their celebrations.
The vent keeps
surprising me. Andy Burnham the culture
secretary turns up and delivers an impassioned speech about poetry and how it changed his life particularly through a film called V and a
poem by Tony Harrison. But this was directed
by Peter Symes who was twenty years later the executive producer of my film
Internal Flight which shall be shown at the literature festival this year. Synchronicity comes to mind and
lots of light.
I didn’t know Burnham was going to be here. But what with
him his speech and the young people it
was a real treat of an evening and rather than feeling tired I'm invigorated.
But believe it or not a photo-shoot
can take it out of you. I get on my bike and cycle home for 10pm. BBC’s Newsnight will launch the poem on line
tomorrow when the laureate is announced