I was sad to hear a poet had died (warning: contains poetry-chat, which many find embarrassing)

I found out by accident today that the poet U A Fanthorpe died in April, which made me very sad. I read a lot of poetry and have books and books of it all over the place in piles; sometimes they fall on my head when I am supposed to be doing something else. I can still recite long chunks of things, from "The King's Breakfast" (which my grandmother used to recite with all the voices when we were in the bath), to "As The Team's Head-Brass" (which I learnt by heart one afternoon when I'd been locked out of the flat in the middle of revising for my English Lit O-Level), and little things like "Celia, Celia" (which makes me think of my friend Louis).

I used to be one of those people who finds poetry embarrassing*, but then something happened and I realised that it is probably the answer to most things. I think it must be very difficult to write good poetry. I have tried, and even with a lot of teaching and help at Birkbeck I was still rubbish at it (but I enjoyed trying more than I have enjoyed most things). On the other hand, it is very easy to write things that people describe as poetry but which are not. (A poem does not have to rhyme, for example, and a good one is unlikely to include the lines: "And that, Mum, is why I love You/And will always kindly think of You.")

Anyway, all that's off the point (if there was one). I am very sad that U A Fanthorpe died because she wrote my favourite love poem. I am afraid I can neither read it nor have it read at our weeeeeding (as MonkeyMother will insist on calling it), as I will fall on the floor in a fit of the vapours and have to be revived with smelling salts and/or a bucket of absinthe. Still, here it is and I hope at least one of you likes it:

ATLAS

There is a kind of love called maintenance
Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it

Which checks the insurance, and doesn’t forget
The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs;

Which answers letters; which knows the way
The money goes; which deals with dentists

And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains,
And postcards to the lonely; which upholds

The permanently rickety elaborate
Structures of living, which is Atlas.

And maintenance is the sensible side of love,
Which knows what time and weather are doing
To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring;
Laughs at my dryrotten jokes; remembers
My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps
My suspect edifice upright in air,
As Atlas did the sky.

Please do go and read some of her other poems. I am really sorry she has died. She seemed like a proper kind of poet. You can buy this lovely book, and there are one or two in this book, which I think is brilliant. I do not think it contains the poem my dear pal Pats** may be reading at our wedding ("Being Boring" by Wendy Cope, yes indeed- Ms Baroque, is it ghastly?), but it has lots of other brilliant things in it. I have given it to at least 10 people and even people who had always gagged in that particularly British way when someone said the word "poem" have reluctantly admitted that it makes poems not embarrassing and OK to like.

(Actually, don't buy books from Amazon. Buy them from Jonathan instead. He is a proper bookseller.)


* I can however confirm that there nothing worse, nothing worse in the world, than a bad poet reading his or her really shit poems to you really earnestly even if you've already said "Oh heavens NO! Do give them to me to READ! SO MUCH EASIER to appreciate them!!!!"

** Not her real name.