Down by the Old Canal: Poetry in Venice

I am just back from Venice where I had a very enjoyable experience reading from my poetry collection The Narrators and from some more recent work. My host was the poet and bookseller John Francis Phillimore, seen here attempting to translate the last of a group of my poems into Italian, an hour or so before the event at his HQ, Old World Books on the Ponte del Gheto Vechio in Venice. A phrase from my slightly fanciful poem "Landscapes" that reads "the man with khaki shorts who writes books in the winter" was exercising John and his assistant at this point while I cowered in another corner of the shop clutching a glass of Prosecco. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening in which we took over a local trattoria and enjoyed a splendid meal and wine. I hope the poems flowed too.