Signed Poetry Books- Touch by Thom Gunn

Perhaps my favourite in my collection of signed poetry books is the copy of Touch signed by Thom Gunn at Cambridge in 1979. It was Weds 14 November and I had taken the train from Lancaster, changing at Leeds, to stay with a friend in Downing College.

I don't remember very much of the reading now except that he read Bally Power Play, the poem about pinball that was later published in The Passages of Joy and that when getting this book signed afterwards I failed to make the most of the opportunity to talk to my big hero. He said that the cover of Touch was his favourite among his books. There was nobody else waiting for his attention and I should have said they were my favourite of his poems, too, but I was 20 years old and a bit overawed and I just thanked him and shuffled away.