Influential Poets

At the literary festival
the academic poet greets
like a long lost friend
the young poet whose first collection
is just out.

They talk ‘man to man’
(of course they’re both men)
about poetic vision.
Around them chat other poets,
perhaps not so young or important,
less fashionable or lacking confidence.

But it is one of the overlooked others
who tonight will go home
to write the poem that one day
will change the life of the woman
hiding just now behind the academic
trying to pluck up the courage
to ask for his autograph.


Previously published on Verse Wrights.

Meanwhile on my Crafty Green Poet blog you can read Weather Forecasting, which was also originally published on Verse Wrights.