under another sun

A last minute decision to travel up to the smoke this morning to arrive at ten. Dawn, who had stayed overnight, gave Lorraine and I a lift to the station and we travelled up to the Victoria & Albert museum, where there was a reading of Shakespeare's sonnets, and 154 responses to them by modern (i.e. alive) poets. Mine was sonnet 19. Lorraine and I were there from the start. They were performing the sonnets in numerical order and reading the responses to each one. To my surprise the poems were read badly, with regular stumbling and in a way that suggested the reader had no idea what they were about. Worse was to come for me, as my poem Locked in the Lines , was designed to be read by two voices, but although there were eight available actors this was missed. The same actor read the whole thing so as to render the poem incomprehensible. You would have thought an acting company devoted to reading poems might have seized the opportunity to do something in two voices, but obviousl...

Nice to be at home, and to wake up with Lorraine in our own bed. Pleased too that the plumbers had been while we were away, and our shower now works again. One gets so accustomed to one's en suite. A day of small food. Small porridge for breakfast. I put on an astonishing amount in Guernsey, eating and drinking far too much. I am really fat at the moment, and I don't like it. No booze today either, which comes as a blessed relief. I love a beer when you've not had one for a while. If you've had some every day for half a week, you lose the joy of it. Got the proof through of my response to Willie the Sheik's Sonnet 19, called Locked in the lines , which luckily gave me the opportunity to fix the misspelling in the draft I sent them, and will stop me looking too much of a chump. In the afternoon back to Bolney to buy some more stumps to expand our stumpery, and some more ferns. Lorraine also showed Pat and Maureen around the school, which they liked a lot, and ...

Sent off my Shakespeare poem this morning for Project 154, and it was acknowledged a few hours later. Quite pleased with it. It will be printed opposite sonnet XIX in the anthology. My poem is focused on the person Shakespeare wants to preserve in the verse. It finishes with 'Yet, do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong,/My love shall in my verse ever live young.' My poem is in the voice of the lover haunting the sonnet, saying he didn't want to be live forever locked in the poem and is called 'Locked in the Lines', and will be printed between the lines of the Sonnet XIX. Future Kenny scholars will observe that this is a typical Kenny move, the sort of thing that was behind This Concert Will Fall In Love With You . Having sent this off as Cactus the next door cat was taking his morning toilet in our bushes, I then had the best morning's writing of poems that I have had in a very long time. Rather chuffed by all this. Then off to the gym, where I had a slig...