I'm writing this on a beach, on holiday, which feels very strange. It's really too sad to take in. Annie was the first Spherean, first poet, I met in the flesh, about 6 years ago. After chatting a while via PM, then email, we arranged I pick her up at the train station and she came to spend the night at my house: a completely adventurous whim, which I loved her for. We went to the pub, talked poetry, gossiped about the Sphere and had a fine and memorable old time of it. It was an honour to count her as a friend. She was so funny and very kind.
And the poems. Just so many clever, wise, affecting, irreverent,
human poems.
People come and go here. She'd been quiet for a while but I never doubted she'd be back, that we might reignite that silly "limerflicks" thread again, and that there would be more poems from her. She emailed me fairly recently to say there was a new collection in the offing that was going to be called Housman's Rat*, and attached a wonderful potential cover of 2 cartoon rats smoking a huge spliff.
I've been reading through our email exchanges, smiling but feeling very sad. I'm really going to miss her.
Here's the Dec 2022 Zoom launch for
Feeling Unusual that Nemo organised and introduces with his characteristic eloquence. What a joy she is here and how much love for her in the room.
https://youtu.be/cgGQM3bOMOU?si=8wKz2xv3T967fD1r
*I never asked her but I assume the title came from this:
"Poetry indeed seems to me more physical than intellectual. A year or two ago, in common with others, I received from America a request that I would define poetry. I replied that I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat, but that I thought we both recognised the object by the symptoms which it provokes in us."
AE Housman
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