I have the phrase ‘legal deposit is for ever’ on my mind, but then wonder who on earth I think I am for even hoping that my writing will last. As Lorde says, ‘only bad people like to see their likeness set in stone.’ To be fair, I’m not asking for a sculpture, just someone to read my writing!

I now know that the novella is in at least one university library (in the USA). I was on the publishing team for Magpie (the year 2000 anthology of writing from UEA from those on the 1999/2000 MA in Creative Writing course) so that has an ISBN. And I have been published in the major newspapers, albeit as a copywriter. I suspect the poems are on-going and will be published at some point, even if I have to buy my own printing press.

Sometimes I think it is far more exciting to make things happen and write about them later. So here goes…

Mrs Thomas de Quincey

‘Not quite the right sort’
The report of the poet with a Phd
In snobbery, the Lakeland straight man
William Wordsworth.

‘What are you thinking, giving a ring
To a milkmaid? Affairs are one thing,
Marriage something else,’ he said, pacing
Around the room on elegant feet.

‘I mean, just think where her hands
Have been,’ he protested, dabbing his
Troubled forehead with a finely starched
Handkerchief, wringing it out

Onto the ice-sleek polished floor,
Watching the sweat drip, flicking
A lock of hair gone stray back
To the left, then right again.

De Quincey paced the room around
With his eyes, surprised by the
Reaction of his friend, so keen to
Lend his voice to the meek and poor,

To champion the cause
Of the idiots and the mad, then
Thomas became glad, because what he had
What he had raised mountains

Stopped streams in their tracks
And made his blood run hotter
Than the sky. He had his life
And would let the others write.