c nerd blog
tin lid

There’s something about rushing down country lanes at silly speeds that has a little in common with the madness in poetry, and this comes from someone who dislikes bikes.

I can never easily let go and just do physically risky things. As a kid, I disliked sliding on a tin lid at the top of a small hill in the snow. One year, when the snow hung around for more than a few hours, I did finally learn to really enjoy zooming down that hill and avoiding the fenceposts at the bottom, until that nasty BBC weatherman took the snow away.

Of course, in writing poetry, I don’t risk decorating the countryside with my internal organs, but I can get the same rush of letting go and just doing that I got from sitting on the tin lid. I’ve found it reading poets like Prynne.

I’m presuming, rather obviously, that my childish tin lid rush is akin to a motorbiker’s speed rush, writ small.