This Is This

I saw a car this morning with the license plate P7OET. It was a pretty nice car, too - a four door sport thing.

I looked to see if I recognised the driver. Admittedly, the few poets I would know by sight are limited to Roger McGough, Benjamin Zephaniah and Andrew Motion. I’m no poet groupie, but my curiosity was tapped. It was none of them.

Hang on, what does a poet earn? Lots of people have personalised plates relating to their professions. P1LOT, SALE5M7N, GU1TAR, etc. It’s fairly vain display because they cost upwards of £1000 ($1,600 US). Poets don’t have that kind of disposable income, do they?

You don’t see lower paying jobs on car registrations. It’s not like you get B1NMAN racing by you. Or P05T1E. BL066ER. R0AD1E.

And even a successful poet wouldn’t race around showing off about what he does or how much money he makes. It doesn’t happen. They are modest and humble.

“Me? Oh - I’m in poetry. Working on a few things now actually. Mostly offshore, high-yield poems. I used to be in rhyming futures, but that’s a mug’s game. Friend of mine put everything on stanzas in ‘98 and nearly lost his quill in the Irish market. He’s now writing haiku in Limerick. There’s a gap in the market there.”

You wouldn’t get it.

And what was P7OET doing driving around in commuter rush hour traffic? I though that poets rose when the inspiration took them, threw on something black and started the day with some Haiku exercises and bowl of Weetabix (Which, by the way is the Breakfast of Poets - they just don’t market it because they can’t think of a rhyme.)

But it must have its benefits, or the driver wouldn’t have bought it. It would be funny getting stopped my police and talking to them purely in iambic pentameter. Or insulting other drivers in an 8 Mile style rap face off, or trading insurance details in rhymes only. “It was just a little shunt”, etc.

So I salute the brazen, vain and well-paid poet who crossed my path today.

Also on This Is This
Instead of thinking “I am cold”, just try: “it’s cold.” It takes the focus off you but makes you part of the experience.
Read this post...

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006 at 8:44 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, or leave a comment yourself.