Twenty four hours of culture. First, an evening at my husband's school to view Beauty and the Beast - as performed by 60 or so pupils, complete with music and physical theatre. As usual, at such an event, I am moved to tears by the dedication of staff and pupils, the focus. This is an experience none of the children will ever forget. It has united them in words in movement and music. They have created a bond of attention with the audience.
And then, the following night, two radio experiences - most unusual to sit still and listen. The first, a tribute to Ted Hughes. Having just returned from Heptonsthall, the landscape of Hughes's childhood is fresh upon me. I understand better his relationship with the landscape. I am transfixed by the transformation of emotion into words. And then, an hour later, my friend Julia Copus broadcasts prose and poetry about her experience of IVF. That same transforming power, to make an experience which could not be more technical, and rooted in decades of science, into art - an exploration of the momentous and the personal. The root of life itself.
That's why, despite the tears and the failures and the disappointments, I am a writer, though I cannot ever claim to be a poet.
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