11 Sep On love and poetry.

Learning to love someone is like poetry. I don't mean that it is beautiful and full of romantic imagery. I mean that it is hard. Poetry is hard. When I was 17 I went on a school trip to a day of talks about literature in the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. There were many speakers. They talked about their favourite texts, or about their own work. Some of it was very boring. But two of the talks have stayed with me, and I remember them all these (nearly 20) years later. Germaine Greer talked about her favourite Shakespearean sonnet and Simon Armitage unpicked his poem, Kid. I happened...