Poetry Days in London: Wednesday, 13 May

(That's right, there were three days in a row of this delight.) I spent the afternoon at one of my favourite places, The British Library, doing some research for my introduction to the anthology I'm editing for Shearsman, Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets. I'm very pleased with the anthology's range, with such poets as Caroline Bergvall, Elisabeth Bletsoe, Carol Watts, Claire Crowther, Zoe Skoulding, Sophie Mayer--the list goes on! To my surprise and pleasure, a while into my research I started writing the intro--it poured onto the paper, and I could see the structure for the essay as a whole. After worrying about how to present and structure it for some months now, I was relieved to have the matter solved. 

That evening Claire and I attended the launch of C.K. Stead's Collected Poems (Carcanet) at New Zealand House. There I met the man himself (who knew my poems from TLS!), Eric Ormsby, Anthony Thwaite, and Siobhan Campbell, and saw some familiar faces, in particular Jane Yeh and Todd Swift. In other words, great conversation bubbled on and on. 

Afterward, Jane, Siobhan, Claire and I decided to go to dinner nearby, and Jane took us to a wonderful Korean restaurant (I'll ask her the name and revise this with it when I have it). We tried a number of unexpected, delicious, and interesting dishes and talked the night away (the launch had begun at 6, so it was only eight or so when we went to dinner). Indeed, when we left and went to catch the tube, Claire and I saw it was eleven-thirty (!) and we'd have to catch a night bus back to Claire's. We didn't stop talking the entire trip; we were both buzzing over the ideal night.