Reading aloud

A hot, hot night in a Portobello Road boookshop for a poetry reading (see my earlier post) hosted by the excellent Pass on a Poem and Oxfam, in aid of Darfur and Chad. As I stand up to read “The Day He Died” by Ted Hughes, I notice Saffron Burrows sitting in the back row of the audience. Just another night in Notting Hill, I guess. I manage to get through without fluffing my lines, I think. Then it’s over to the real talent. Our own Rachel Johnson reveals that (in addition to all her other talents) she has a beautiful speaking voice, reading Auden’s Epitaph on a Tyrant with great poise and power. And speaking of that poet, the great Alex James, Blur bassist and man of letters, reveals that his own haircut  is “centenary Auden”, to mark the 100th anniversary of Wystan’s birth. Alex tells me during the break that he is working on some pop songs with Steven Berkoff, an enticing prospect (will Steven sing?). Meanwhile, he reads Hire Car by John Cooper Clarke with a witty delivery worthy of the original punk poet. P.D. James delivers as stately a rendition of Dover Beach as you would expect, Craig Raine reads an Alice Oswald poem but offers a line-by-line exegesis first, and the People’s Atheist, Richard Dawkins, chooses D.H. Lawrence’s Snake. But the laurel must go to Fiona Shaw who delivers from memory a stunning mash-up of Ted Hughes’s translation of Ovid’s story of Echo and Narcissus and Eliot’s “Wasteland”: stunning stuff, prompting Jon Snow to pay homage to the actress’s feet. And not bad to pack out a bookshop on the night of the Champions League Final: to Pass on a Poem, respect is most certainly due