Cutting onions into moons

Having someone else read your poem out loud is very surreal. I still don't know the name of the guy who did it last night, but I liked the way they did it - even though at the time it was EXCRUCIATINGLY embarrassing and I was tugging at my hair so hard it almost fell out. Anyway, he read it well, although - and I suppose this is natural - it sounded different in my head. He read it quite slowly, for a start, and in my head it was always meant to be read really really really fast, like some frenetic advert. This isn't me complaining: it's just different interpretations or something, I don't know.

Yesterday also proved that I'm not very good at the whole canapes-and-mingling thing. My tactic is basically: Drink. Eat. Babble. ("Tiny banoffee pies you probably wouldn't touch in any other context? Why thank you, I'll have SIX!") So at one point Daljit Nagra asked me which poets I liked and all I could think to say was "ERRRRRRRRRRRR I really like YOU, actually!" Cringe, cringe, cringe. And then when I tried to plug Pomegranate to Helen Mort, I spent ages circling her trying to work up the courage and then finally just went, "Are you Helen Mort????" ("Yes.") "Have you heard of Pomegranate? No? Er (brain turns into banoffee pie) it's like...for YOUNG POETS...and like...anyone can submit and like...will you? I mean would you? I mean are you interested? Erm. Have a flyer!" Only we'd run out of flyers, so what I actually gave her was a piece of paper with www.pomegranate.me.uk written on it in Adham's gel pen. And what I didn't realise was that she was standing with another girl who was also a poet, and I didn't offer her a flyer, so basically I insulted her.

Awesome PR, Annie, just awesome. (Charly gave the other girl - Bridget Collins - a flyer later, and we talked and she was really nice. So that's OK, but also aaarggh.)

There was also the podcast, which had me going yada-yada-yada at the speed of light due to sheer nerves, and then reading out my poem badly. But it was really good to see all the other winners and they all seemed like pretty fantastic people, and their poems are brilliant - it took an hour to get home and I spent the whole time buried in the anthology (well, the stapled-together sheets of winning poems). Also - free books! Tobias Hill's Nocturne In Chrome & Sunset Yellow, which I was actually planning to get, so score - it's got this amazing sequence called A Year In London in it. And a selection of Shakespeare's verse selected by Ted Hughes, and Two Barks by Julie O'Callaghan which to be honest I'm a bit confused by - they're basically children's poems? Not that I'm against children's poetry, but...well, anyway.

All in all, an interesting evening.

It made today's extravaganza of UCAS finalising, English coursework, Tsar Nicolas II, cold rice salad and helping the classics department set up for Open Day incredibly dull and depressing, not to mention the impending weekend of - oh, let's see - work, work, work, work, work, work...