Themes discussed in the first workshop include:
what it's about | level of
detail needed | who's Max | who's
Kathy Lette? | who's Harold? | who's
Tony Benn? | who's Enoch Soames?
Theme links for the second workshop will be added in a future version of the hPWp.
ELIZABETH: [EXCITED] Oh, I'm in this! I'm in this! At least I was there!
KIM: You've probably been taken out. You were probably in it...
RICHARD: Well, there you go. I was there as well.
KIM: … a draft before.
LEONA: It's only really famous people who are named.
KIM: [LAUGHS] Not any more. They've been taken out as well. It's moving towards an epigram, obviously.
[KIM READS A SHORTENED DRAFT OF THE POEM, REVISED BEFORE THE WORKSHOP]
Photograph: British Library Reading Room
November 23, 1997
There are too many writers to stand
so we sit in the chairs
yes, that's me!
three down from Penelope
No Max, of course,
but that's me!
leaning towards Helen
Kathy Lette, triumphant
being told to take her feet off the chairs
not to mention her bum
But that's me!
And in a hundred years time
when the negative's turned
I'll still be there:
In front of Harold
Leaning towards Helen
Three to the left of Penelope
Two up from Tony Benn
Right beside Enoch Soames
--- unidentified.
LEONA: I don't believe anyone was saying you shouldn't sit on the chairs.
RICHARD: Feet off the chairs.
LEONA: It's been rewritten to say 'not to mention'
KIM: Ah, I see, yes! I've been fiddling around with that third line. It's not that she had her feet up on the chair; she had her bum up on the desk, and her feet on the chair from there. And that needs to be clarified.
LEONA: Yeah.
KIM: But how? Any suggestions?
CAHAL: No, I thought it was all right.
ELIZABETH: I thought you were just saying she had a large bottom. I don't know who she is. I assumed you were just being catty.
RICHARD: That's what I thought.
LEONA: Well, when it's 'no one' mentions your bum, but the rewriting of it …
CAHAL: But the essence of that event was that 247 writers were reduced in the press to Kathy Lette sitting on a desk. That the Library should be centred on Kathy Lette!
ELIZABETH: Who is she?
KIM: She's written a string of novels.
CAHAL: She's all right. She's a public person. Appears in shop windows in a bath to publicise her work.
KIM: Good writer, though.
LEONA: Well, I have no objection to her …
CAHAL: They're not serious books, they're just a series of Australian jokes.
KIM: Hmm. Anyway, that line definitely has to be clarified, doesn't it?
RICHARD: [TO CAHAL] Oh, you're just terrible, aren't you.
CAHAL: But she is just terrible. She's terrible.
RICHARD: How do you know?
CAHAL: Because she's on the radio all the time.
KIM: But what about me? Does being on the radio make me terrible? Or you, for that matter!
[ELIZABETH LAUGHS]
LEONA: She's the kind of person who, in her every public utterance outside her novels, makes me think I will never read one of her novels.
CAHAL: Are they novels? I thought they were just [SNAPS HIS FINGERS]
LEONA: No, they're novels. They're novels. You may not recognise them as such.
ELIZABETH: All right, I want an explanation: What's 'when the negative's turned'?
KIM: Well, when you turn over the negative …
ELIZABETH: [TO KIM] I'm not asking YOU about that.
KIM: [REALISING SHE ISN'T SUPPOSED TO BE SPEAKING] Oops.
ELIZABETH: I want to know if I'm the only person who had a problem with that.
CAHAL: 'And in a hundred years time ….'
RICHARD: I guess everyone knows who 'Enoch Soames' is?
ELIZABETH: I was trying to remember. Isn't he a fictitious character in …
CAHAL: He's going to turn up in a hundred year's time.
RICHARD: Well, as Elizabeth was going to say, he's a fictional character by Max Beerbohm.
CAHAL: And he was supposed to turn up in '98, wasn't he. Or '97.
RICHARD: '97 it was. In the Round Reading Room And he did.
ELIZABETH: Oh right. Oh, right.
RICHARD: We made sure that he did. On the day.
ELIZABETH: Did he just, like, walk about?
LEONA: He checked the catalogue.
RICHARD: The thing is, would we need to know that? Because it does rather clinch it, doesn't it at the end of the poem.
LEONA: It's sort of what the poem's about. So you'd have to know that.
ELIZABETH: Did anyone else know that he was a fictional character?
RICHARD: [TO ELIZABETH] What did you get from it, then, before I spilled the beans?
ELIZABETH: [LAUGHS] Nothing, really.
HUGH: Except the sense of 'That's Me!' As against all of these names that mean nothing, except, somehow, as names… In other words, is this a poem that actually you can only understand if you can bring to it knowledge of the British Library Reading Room on a particular day, or is it a poem that stands outside that? Is it: 'That's me as opposed to all these other people'?
LEONA: I think it's that. And if you know the 'Enoch Soames' story, it can shed a slightly different light on it. Because the reason he's there is that he's given this wonderful chance to go to the future, a hundred years into the future, and look up his name in the British Library catalogue.
KIM: Something he's sold his soul to the devil to do.
LEONA: Yes, he sells his soul to the devil for the glory of looking at all of his books in the British Library catalogue.
KIM: And finds he's cited once as the fictional character in a short story by Max Beerbohm.
ELIZABETH: The problem is not Enoch Soames, who actually, you could go down to the British Library and find out who he was. It's Kathy Lette, who is far less interesting than the idea of Enoch Soames.
LEONA: In a hundred years time, will anyone know who she is?
ELIZABETH: Exactly. And 'Helen', 'Max', 'Penelope' – we don't know who they are.
RICHARD: But that's ok.
ELIZABETH: The whole point is, they're cited by their first names, you know it's all sort of 'luvvie-land.'
CAHAL: I thought that worked.
RICHARD: Yes, it does.
CAHAL: I tried to guess who the writers were. But who's 'Max?'
RICHARD: Max Beerbohm, of course.
ELIZABETH: Yes.
CAHAL: 'No Max of course' – but then, that was mentioned earlier in the poem, and I didn't recognise him until I got to the end. It seems to me, this photograph about being there, and the other 'Harold' and 'Penelope' and 'Kathy' would be ok. 'and that's me' 'and that's me' would be ok. It would be a fine poem 'And in a hundred years time' – people will recognise that that's me. three down from Penelope and two up from Tony Benn. That would be fine. The other thing – and I always have a problem with this when you don't know something, you feel stupid [LAUGHS] – but that problem with Enoch Soames is that either you do know him, or not, and are you glad it's in the poem, or are you not? And I think, on balance, I'm not.
ELIZABETH: I disagree with that.
CAHAL: Right.
ELIZABETH: I am glad that it's in the poem. And particularly if it's being a signal; that it's of a different order. I think you almost get the gesture of the joke.
RICHARD: You do. You do. I mean, you're almost laughing, aren't you?
ELIZABETH: I think so, yes.
RICHARD: Like people who laugh who don't get the joke, but they do get it in a way. Because jokes aren't just about the actual thing. There's actually the syntax of the joke.
LEONA: I'm not sure now what's still in the poem and what isn't. It seems to me that, after the reading that you gave, what still needs to be done is to take out Kathy's last name. And put something more in about her attitude. The attitude she's striking.
KIM: Mmmm.
LEONA: And I can't remember if Pitt-Kethley's baby is still in there.
RICHARD: No, no.
LEONA: Good. [QUOTING FROM THE POEM'S FIRST DRAFT] I think you need 'Kathy's black heels.' And 'her legs in the air.' You need that kind of stuff. And you need nobody's last name. Except Tony Benn's. And I'll tell you why that's good. It's because all these other people are obviously writers. And he's someone who writes, but he's not really a writer. And that's why we know who he is, and we'll know who he is in a hundred years time. That's one of the best things in the poem.
ELIZABETH: Yes. Perhaps it would be nice to if he was a little bit further away from Enoch Soames.
CAHAL: Because Enoch Soames is a fictional character.
RICHARD: Mr. Benn is as well.
LEONA: When it's this much shorter, I'm not sure those distances matter.
KIM: Mmm. No. I liked all those mythic names, too, and if you sort of put them together with the people who have them now …
HUGH: Yeah.
RICHARD: [TO KIM] Oh yeah, you're right!
KIM: That's what I was playing around with …
LEONA: [TO KIM] No! You shouldn't have said that! You should have given us a few more minutes … if you'd given us a few more minutes, one of us would have noticed that. And then you would have felt: 'Great: it worked!' Now you've lost yourself that certainty.
KIM: [TO LEONA] But I've got her legs back in the air, thanks to you.
ELIZABETH: I never would have got that. Particularly with .. I mean, 'Max' and 'Harold' are not …
CAHAL: 'Harold' is historical. He's not as mythic as 'Helen' and 'Penelope' I agree.
KIM: [AGREEING] No. Should I drop old Harold, then?
CAHAL: I don't know. Harold is quite important.
RICHARD: Just drop the notion that there's some kind of mythological dimension to Harold Pinter.
CAHAL: 'Penelope' could be one of about seven people.
ELIZABETH: Yes.
LEONA: [TO ELIZABETH] It's an extraordinary thing. All the pictures that I've seen, Kim is in about 90% of them, and you were in hardly any of them.
ELIZABETH: I was very embarrassed about it, because I felt very sheepish about the whole thing. I didn't quite have the moral fibre of those who went and just strolled to the other end of the room, or of those like Kim who entered into the spirit of it.
RICHARD: [AGREEING] I felt I was more a librarian, and I dwelt behind the camera.
KIM: It doesn't matter though, because that photograph they took last year, on November 23d, is going to make as much sense to people in 2097 as any archival photograph they would have taken in 1897 means to us. I mean, we wouldn't recognise most of those writers who everyone thought were tremendous.
ELIZABETH: Well, with the possible exception, of Harold.
CAHAL: They'll know who he was, but they wouldn't recognise him.
KIM: Well, I have to put a pause in before 'Harold' – would that have been better?
CAHAL: No, I really meant that one can remember what Thomas Hardy looks like, but Pinter changes from day to day.
ELIZABETH: I disagree with that. He has very distinctive spectacles.
LEONA: Yeah, but in a hundred years time…
CAHAL: He doesn't look like the same guy as the last time I saw a picture of him.
KIM: It doesn't really matter because his reputation isn't going to last a hundred years, so …
ELIZABETH: I think it might. Because it was an important moment.
KIM: His early advertisements will turn up.
LEONA: I think because of the influence that he had, he will always be remembered, whether we remember some of the plays or not.
KIM: Well, we're just going to have to collect this bet in a hundred year's time, Leona. Bottle of champagne. [TALKING ABOUT THE POEM] But is it working?
ELIZABETH: Could you just read it again?
KIM: Ok. But I'm going to have to leave out the legs in the air, for this version.
LEONA: Read whatever you want.
KIM: [READS REVISED POEM]
There are too many writers to stand
so we sit in the chairs
yes, that's me
three down from
Penelope
no Max, of course
but that's me
leaning towards Helen
Kathy, triumphant, being told
to take her feet off the chairs
and her bum off the desk
But that's me!
and in a hundred year's time
When the negative's turned
I'll still be there:
In front of Harold
leaning towards Helen
three to the left of Penelope
Two up from Tony Benn
Right beside Enoch Soames
(unidentified)
LEONA: [AFTER A PAUSE] I think what 'the negative's turned' means is what Cahal was saying at the reading the other night. Things get printed the wrong way round, because nobody knows any more which way they were.
ELIZABETH: Oh, when the negative's reversed, then.
LEONA: Yeah. Reversed. When the print's turned round the wrong way.
ELIZABETH: And the other thing I don't quite know what it means - is 'No Max, of course.'
RICHARD: [WHISPERS] Max Beerbohm.
LEONA: Max Beerbohm.
ELIZABETH: [PUZZLED] Max Beerbohm isn't there?
LEONA: Max Beerbohm isn't there because he'd dead, you know.[LAUGHS] We would have liked him to be there.
RICHARD: He died a bit earlier.
[RICHARD AND LEONA LAUGH]
ELIZABETH: It sticks out like a sore thumb, doesn't it, as a bit of plotting. I mean, we weren't expecting it, we hardly know where we are, or who we are …
LEONA: But you don't need to know until you get to the end. It's only at the end …
HUGH: Yeah, you read back to who 'Max' is.
ELIZABETH: Am I the only person who doesn't think this works?
CAHAL: Long after it had been discussed who 'Enoch Soames' was, that he was a fictional character, I still asked the question, and said: so who are Penelope and Harold and Helen – and who's Max?
KIM: [TO CAHAL] And yet, you quote Dylan Thomas forever. [LAUGHS]
CAHAL: But it's the unexpectedness of ever having to go back and reread part of the poem. [LAUGHS]
ELIZABETH: Yes.
CAHAL: In this kind of poem, I'm not sure that one expects to have to do that. I suppose, yeah, there's a bit of a clue. When I got to the bit at the end, I didn't immediately think – and even when it was explained to me that's what was coming up – I didn't think 'Oh, yeah. Should have spotted it.'
KIM: So do you think perhaps that I should move 'Max' down?
CAHAL: I think 'Max' doesn't work.
LEONA: In the shortened version that you're ending up with, 'Max' won't be that far away from 'Enoch' but you might still consider moving him.
CAHAL: I'd consider removing him totally, because I think 'Harold' and 'Penelope' and 'Helen' and 'Kathy' can all be fairly contemporary writers, and it's the luvvie-ness of that, and mentioning Max in those terms isn't right.
ELIZABETH: Well, the problem is that you start the list with 'No Max' … there's no context for that, it's swivelling completely the wrong way.
CAHAL: And it's a long time before the connection of it.
ELIZABETH: [AGREEING WITH CAHAL] It's a long time, and it doesn't feel like 'Oh, yes.' It doesn't feel like a light coming on. And to be honest, if people don't know, they're not going to put Enoch Soames together with Max.
CAHAL: Well, I didn't, so that's a fair percentage of the population at large.
ELIZABETH: No, and I didn't. And even after it had been explained, we still didn't.
CAHAL: Two out of six people didn't get it.
RICHARD: [LAUGHING] They have to be told.
KIM: So we get rid of the other four; I'll be a genius.[LAUGHS]
LEONA: How many among us here have read Max Beerbohm?
RICHARD: It's just that Kim's been on about it for the last ten years.
ELIZABETH: I had heard of 'Enoch Soames,' but I wasn't quite sure where, and I had the sense that it was a fictional character.
KIM: Ok. So I was right to be cutting this shorter, wasn't I?
GENERAL AGREEMENT: Yes, yes. Absolutely. I think that's right. Absolutely.
KIM: Thank you.
LATER WORKSHOP ON A REVISED VERSION
Kim reads: (second draft)
Richard: [TO CHRIS] Do you know who Enoch Soames is?
Chris: Yeah. Enoch Soames is the character in a novel ... now I'm trying to think ... it's not Max Beerbohm's, is it? It is. Ok. So he's a character. That wasn't the name of the novel was it?
Richard: I think it was a story.
Chris: It's a story. But I couldn't tell you what the content of the story is.
Richard: I haven't read it, but I gather he sells his soul so he can appear again in the Round Reading Room.
Chris: Right. now we have a fix. Right.
Richard: I think that knowing about 'Enoch Soames' is quite a lot to ask of a reader.
Chris: I mean, we puzzled it out.
Kim: Do you think a footnote would solve the problem?
Richard: A footnote or ... I mean, I'm not really that keen on footnotes unless they're a kind of joke. So if you could think about re-doing the title in some way ...
Kim: What - call it 'Enoch Soames A Fictional Character Who Appears A Hundred Years Later In The Max Beerbohm Story Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah'?
Richard: Personally, I think that something in small italic type underneath the title would be nicer than a footnote.
Kim: [LAUGHING] 'for Enoch Soames'? Right. [TO RICHARD] Now what would you do, if this was yours?
Richard: Well, that's what I would do.
Chris: I mean, in terms of reference, we got there, but I'd have had to pursued it more.
Richard: I think that Max Beerbohm is not a literary figure that many people will know about. It's more to do with the Metropolitan kind of mythology.
Kim: [SURPRISED] Really?
Richard: I think so, to be honest.
Kim: [DISAGREEING] I read him in Saskatchewan, when I was fourteen.
Richard: Yeah, but poets are different from readers.
Kim: [JOKING] He's bigger than Bob Dylan.
Richard: [LAUGHING] He is not bigger than Bob Dylan.
Chris: He was a great, great, cartoonist.
Richard: Yeah.
Chris: There was a wonderful, wonderful one of ...
Kim: Christina Rossetti! He's quoting one of her joyous poems ("My Heart is Like a Singing Bird") and she's there looking glum.
Chris: Can we just do a bit of identification here ... so 'Penelope' ...
Richard: Is Penelope Lively, I presume. the novelist.
Chris: Right.
Richard: Not Lady Penelope.
Chris: Right. 'Helen?'
Richard: Could be Helen Dunmore ...
Chris: And 'Harold' is Pinter?
Richard: Oh, yes. I would have thought so. I mean, basically, we know that they're Authors. So there's a kind of lovey-dovey voice here .... 'luvvies' that's the term isn't it, as if they were actors. I like the way Tony Benn gets the full name. [LAUGHING] 'Tony' could be misinterpreted. And I like the 'me.' It reminds me a bit of Ruby Wax. 'Me! Me! Me! '
Chris: Yeah, well, that's how the poem works, doesn't it? Those two 'that's me's' actually justify themselves. And in a way, they justify the whole strategy of the poem. Wheel out all the greats ... I'm there!' and I think it's wonderful ... 'When the negative's turned/ I'll still be there.'
Richard: Right.
Chris: I like this 'just Harold in mid-pause at the back/ being historical' [LAUGHS] I think that's very good. I think that's just the bun.
Kim: Is it all right to have that long pause before 'being historical?'
Richard: Oh no, that's right. That is the mid-pause, isn't it? There he is. Now, what about 'millenium?' How do we spell 'millenium?' Do we spell it 'millenium' or do we spell it 'millennium?' [CORRECTING KIM'S TYPO] It's got two 'n's.
Chris: Two n's? Oh yes, it does.
Richard: I only know that because I've spelled it that way all my life.
Kim: What I wanted to know is: should 'millennium' have a capital 'M' or not?
Richard: Oh, no, I like it like that. And I like the idea of the so-called 'New Technologies' being quite old by now. You know, like plastic has been around for quite a while, now. There's a sense of them almost being traditional materials of our time. So I love that phrase ... 'pre-millennial'
Chris: It becomes just part of history, and nothing special. It kind of deflates the whole buzz. That computers will be regarded as obsolete ...
Richard: ... like a 'Telegraphic Machine.'
Chris: Yeah. Or 'Telephone,'even, would have been for Max.
Richard: I wonder if there is an intentional ambiguity in the word 'rows' in 'to the left, the new reader's rows.' Could it also mean 'rows' [pronounced -ow, meaning disturbance,noisy dispute]. 'To the left, the new reader's rows of pre-millenium computers' ...
Chris: Oh right, right.
Richard: There is a sense of rancour here. 'There are two many writers to stand'... in other words, you can't stand them all.
Chris: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Right.
Richard: Kathy Lette's bottom. I like the way she gets a whole stanza to herself.
Kim: [LAUGHING] Well, she replaced the official photograph in most papers. [TO CHRIS] Did you see that?
Chris: No, I didn't.
Kim: They took this very official photograph of - what was it - 245 writers, and then, in fact, most of the papers led with Kathy Lette, who got her bum up on a desk, and feet up as well, and crossed her legs, and said she wanted to 'put the clit into lit.'
Richard: [JOKING] There were many librarians quite willing to attend to her.
Chris: [LAUGHS]
Kim: Well, she left with Marina Warner, so they couldn't have been very aggressive. Now does that stanza work, with Kathy?
Richard/Chris: Oh yes.
Kim: This is a later draft, and it wasn't working before. People thought I was saying she had a big bum.
Richard: The word 'sleek' tends to counter that.
Kim: Good.Does 'Antipodal' work?
Chris: Yes. And what's interesting is the positioning 'and that's me' -- because the same motif is repeated. 'Yes, that's me'. So up here, you've got 'three down from Penelope' ... and then down here, I'm three to the left of Penelope.' I'm leaning towards Helen' still .. and I'm two up from Tony Benn... rather than just two to the right of him. So what's happening now?
Richard: It's just a synonym, though, isn't it? Because you can still be 'three to the left of Penelope' and be down from her. it's just saying the same thing in a different way. I don't think it's changed ...
Chris: Fine. So it is a synonym ...
Kim: Now, how do I make this more obvious, because it's very important that the first one is very specific: three down and you're two to the right of Tony Benn. They can flip over the negative, though, and suddenly 'two to the right of Tony Benn' doesn't mean anything anymore.
Richard: Oh, I see what you mean.
Chris: So I am on to something. So, is this meant to be the obverse?
Richard: Ah, right, right. Because the negative's been turned. Oh, right. You have to stress the inadvertence of that. that it's been some kind of accident. Ah, got it! That's another nice layer. So no one actually knows you.That's much more clever.
Chris: So you want the last bit to invert the top bit.
Richard: See, I saw the negative turning as almost curling.
Chris: Yeah.
Richard: This being almost a metaphysical thing, that we were still there in time. but you're not meaning that at all. It's been -- what's another word for 'turned?' Turning to me means that curling up around the edges.
Kim: Right. So something like 'flipped'
Richard: Yeah, something like that.
Kim: Yeah, I've got to just make it all a lot clearer.
Chris: I mean, I like it as a phrase.It hovers there.
Richard: 'When the negative's turned' .... It's a tense thing as well. It's something like 'when the negative's been turned.' Because this is after the negative has been turned, because it's a representation from the negative, so there's actually a little time period between the time that the negative has been accidentally flipped, and then its presentation somewhere.
Chris: What would happen, just in terms of content -- I mean, there may be problems in terms of sound and everything else -- if you followed the same order.
Kim: [TO CHRIS] What if I just did 'two to the left of Tony Benn' instead, in the last stanza? I wanted the negative 'turned' rather than 'reversed' or 'flipped;' those words just didn't work. they were just too obvious.
Chris: [AGREEING] And there's something about 'turned' -- it's about turning up. Because the title is 'Photograph (Now Lost)' there's this sense of type of redemption, this negative is turning up, and you don't know which way it's going to be read or looked at.
Kim: What about that title? Because I've been playing around with that, as well.I'm not satisfied.
Chris: I mean, I like the idea of 'Official Photograph (Now Lost)' I think you need to have that information somewhere.
Kim: Do you think maybe 'The British Library' should be in smaller italics or something, so it's not carrying the weight of the title?
Chris: [AGREEING] If the poem is called 'Official Photograph (Now Lost)' I think that's a great title for the poem.
Richard: Yeah. Yeah.
Chris: I think do that. then you've got a clear title.
Kim: And now, the 'Old Reading Room' stanza - how is that working?
Richard: That's fine.
Chris: I think that's fine. And it's important because it carries a strong sort of feeling tone to the poem, which is about the loss of the history of that place. because, in a sense, making reference to Max Beerbohm you're automatically focussing the reader to the time -- to the great days of the Reading Room. do you know, what was interesting, was that I misread that as 'Marx.'
Richard: That is what I would have thought it was.
Chris: Which is fine. It's quite a nice slip of the mind. so I think it's fine.And I like 'its great airy ...' I like the word 'airy.' Because it's affectionate as well.
Richard: It compares well with the kind of zzz of the halogen lights.
Chris: Yes, yes.
Richard: They're almost 'air denying' In fact, they are. they're a gas.
Chris: It's about the contrast of something much tighter and less spacious. Intellectually less spacious.
Kim: Now, if I did a footnote for Enoch Soames, or did something in the title, giving Max Beerbohm his credit what if I changed the 'No one's thinking of Max' to 'No one's thinking of Marx' — because I have to admit, they weren't thinking of Marx either.Would that give it more weight?
Richard: I don't think that 'Max' would be a loss, because you've got 'Enoch Soames'
Chris: So you could have your cake and eat it.
Kim: Good.
Richard: I think put 'Marx.'
Kim: I think that's an excellent suggestion.
Richard: We had a reader come into the new Library, and I was on the Enquiry desk. An American chap. I was explaining to him how to use the new Reading Room. He said 'So which particular desk did Marx sit in.' [EVERYONE LAUGHS] And I thought: 'You haven't got it at all! You have no sense of history whatsoever. For some people, 19th century - 20th century that's all modern, isn't it. for them, Marx could quite possibly have studied across the rows there.
Kim: [JOKING] Groucho Marx.
Chris: [JOKING] We have an ignorance decompression chamber .... It's the turn on the left ... We have a Virtual Reality A-Level course, which will take 35 seconds to ingest, in the form of a pill.
Kim: So is this working now? Because Richard saw it in the first draft....
Richard: I think it's better. Much, much better.
Kim: Then with a bit of tweaking ...
Richard: I think it's an occasional poem in the best sense. And with those poems, you have to push the occasion. That's why a note is absolutely fine.
Chris: Do you know, this reminds me of a wonderful photograph of all the greats at some bookstore in New York, in the mid-fifties. You've got Auden, Marianne Moore, Lowell, Berryman, I mean, the whole crew is there, and then, sitting like a Cheshire Cat, is Elizabeth Bishop.And the reason I mention it is that the first time I saw that photograph I didn't know who Elizabeth Bishop was. Then I got into Elizabeth Bishop, and then I saw the photograph again. So she was anonymous in my first viewing of that photograph. [JOKING] So there you are - you're up with Elizabeth Bishop. I like it. It has a nice feel to it.
Kim: [JOKING] Now we've sorted out Kathy's bum.
Chris: I loved the 'that's me, that's me. but that's me ....'
Richard: And the twist at the end.
Chris: 'Unidentified. 'Yes, that's good.
Kim: Oh, good! Thank you. Thank you very much.