okso.
I am sososososo tired today. Things about Carol Ann Duffy, though:
• Um, it was OMGAMAZING. Here are me, Holly and Maria in our ~Specially Reserved Seats Set Apart For Us at the Side of the Stage~:
• We thought she wasn't going to see us read -- she wasn't there when Maria started -- but she appeared while Maria was reading and she watched Holly and me from the back. CAD has watched me read my poems, f'list!
• So Maria was lovely, Holly was awesome, and then I was up. My heart was going a mile a minute, as you might well imagine. But thankfully I managed not to babble all over the place between poems. Much.
C'est moi! An audience of 250-odd, by the way, which is not the largest I've performed in front of by far -- the Floral Pavilion, where we do our pantomimes, seats 800+ -- but it is the most people I've ever read my poetry in front of. I did the best reading I've ever done, though, so yay for me or something?
• Then CAD read. She was, unsurprisingly, fabulous. She read about 3 from The World's Wife, which is the CAD book to shamelessly trump all CAD books for me, so I was pleased and excited and pleased. Awesome thing: after we three finished reading, she took to the stage with a taken-aback expression and said to us, "You weren't meant to be that good!" and talked about how when she was our age, female poets were called 'poetesses', and would never have been allowed to upstage the laureate as we had just done. Eep! Then during her final round of applause she brought the three of us centre-stage and we all bowed together. It was pretty cool.
• Pics or it didn't happen -- here's me, The Duffy, Holly and Maria (featuring John Gorman in support):
• And here's me gleefully displaying the Shiny New Selected Poems my mum bought for me and she signed (while I gibbered away like an idiot -- cringe):
It says 'love and congratulations', f'list! Carol Ann Duffy gave me love and congratulations!
(And she made a joke about the two z's on my name. ILY CAD.)
• Um, it was OMGAMAZING. Here are me, Holly and Maria in our ~Specially Reserved Seats Set Apart For Us at the Side of the Stage~:
• We thought she wasn't going to see us read -- she wasn't there when Maria started -- but she appeared while Maria was reading and she watched Holly and me from the back. CAD has watched me read my poems, f'list!
• So Maria was lovely, Holly was awesome, and then I was up. My heart was going a mile a minute, as you might well imagine. But thankfully I managed not to babble all over the place between poems. Much.
C'est moi! An audience of 250-odd, by the way, which is not the largest I've performed in front of by far -- the Floral Pavilion, where we do our pantomimes, seats 800+ -- but it is the most people I've ever read my poetry in front of. I did the best reading I've ever done, though, so yay for me or something?
• Then CAD read. She was, unsurprisingly, fabulous. She read about 3 from The World's Wife, which is the CAD book to shamelessly trump all CAD books for me, so I was pleased and excited and pleased. Awesome thing: after we three finished reading, she took to the stage with a taken-aback expression and said to us, "You weren't meant to be that good!" and talked about how when she was our age, female poets were called 'poetesses', and would never have been allowed to upstage the laureate as we had just done. Eep! Then during her final round of applause she brought the three of us centre-stage and we all bowed together. It was pretty cool.
• Pics or it didn't happen -- here's me, The Duffy, Holly and Maria (featuring John Gorman in support):
• And here's me gleefully displaying the Shiny New Selected Poems my mum bought for me and she signed (while I gibbered away like an idiot -- cringe):
It says 'love and congratulations', f'list! Carol Ann Duffy gave me love and congratulations!
(And she made a joke about the two z's on my name. ILY CAD.)