From the bubble

Haiti is hell. Watching TV with waves of horror and sympathy for those broken people, wandering stunned in streets of cadavers. I will send money from my little bubble of English safety.

I popped briefly into the gym. And later back to what I now think of as my lucky cafe and, despite a baby screaming for twenty minutes, managed to completely review my poems. I made some exciting progress. Tried and failed to get a response from my old agency about the money they owe me. It's not malevolence, just inefficiency. But wasting so much time chasing is galling.

Took myself out late this evening for a quiet beer and to read Dictée, by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. My old university friend Michael Stone Richards has written a paper about it. With a first skim it appears to be about the struggle to speak, and how individuals' lives have been dictated by forces beyond their control, the struggles of nations, the impositions of foreign languages and so on. MSR has a fascination for what is difficult, and when we were students, introduced me to one of my all-time favourite poet Paul Celan, as well as the tricky JH Prynne, I am persisting with it.