From the Archives - The Glory Years at Ottakars

One's career has reached a new low when, having raised the required enthusiasm to actually send some poems to a magazine, they are returned unopened because you hadn't put enough postage on them. Exactly how 4 sheets of A4 in a brown envelope can need more than a first class stamp is beyond me but, never mind. It doesn't actually make any difference to me because I've seen the poems but it's a thrill denied to the readers that some might now never see those poems.

It wasn't always thus. As recently as April 2006, I was collecting prizes - here at Ottakars bookshop in Portsmouth for being judged best poem by them in their branch before missing out on the monkey that the National winner got.

Magazines would sometimes send me money for pieces they printed, I'd turn up at places and read to people. It was just like being a literary figure of the minorest kind. But although the evidence of the picture suggests it made me very happy at the time, I don't know. It's not as if it made any difference and others are welcome to have their names in such places now.

Thanks to Selina for taking the picture, eventually. She nearly forgot.