Bad News
Thursday, September 23, 2004
I was going to post about another serendipitous book discovery but I had some bad news this morning and I've been down all day. Now I'm two large glasses of Grenache down.
Michael Donaghy died last week. I missed the news and his obituary in the Independent and found out only through an email from a friend with whom I did a poetry class with Michael. It's not as if I was friends with Michael. We swapped emails during the time I was in his class and for a short while after. Then nothing for 15 months. Then this news.
He brought me back to reading poetry, not only because his own was so powerful but also because he approached it with such enthusiasm. He wasn't snooty about it either: poetry was just his way of making his case. And he was funny and a little scatty and scruffy and full of laughter, reserving seriousness for what he perceived others took seriously. When he criticised your poetry it felt like he had read it and he knew what you wanted to say. What you were struggling to say. I think he was saddened by the fact that he hadn't the time nor the energy to help everyone put what they wanted or needed to say into the best form.
So I'm missing someone I hardly knew. Can't explain it.
If you want to help his family, please buy a copy of his poems. He was a winned of the Whitbread and the Forward prizes. These are not shabby poems. His first two collections are found in the Picador "Remembering Dances Learned Last Night". These poems alone can restore your belief in the worth of poetry.
Michael Donaghy died last week. I missed the news and his obituary in the Independent and found out only through an email from a friend with whom I did a poetry class with Michael. It's not as if I was friends with Michael. We swapped emails during the time I was in his class and for a short while after. Then nothing for 15 months. Then this news.
He brought me back to reading poetry, not only because his own was so powerful but also because he approached it with such enthusiasm. He wasn't snooty about it either: poetry was just his way of making his case. And he was funny and a little scatty and scruffy and full of laughter, reserving seriousness for what he perceived others took seriously. When he criticised your poetry it felt like he had read it and he knew what you wanted to say. What you were struggling to say. I think he was saddened by the fact that he hadn't the time nor the energy to help everyone put what they wanted or needed to say into the best form.
So I'm missing someone I hardly knew. Can't explain it.
If you want to help his family, please buy a copy of his poems. He was a winned of the Whitbread and the Forward prizes. These are not shabby poems. His first two collections are found in the Picador "Remembering Dances Learned Last Night". These poems alone can restore your belief in the worth of poetry.
