I left no stone unturned. I charged through my back catalogue like a man possessed, reading, chuckling, applauding. Sometimes I would fire one into the ether, to see who saluted. I’d chuck one out of my window, recite one to the Turkish girls who run the dry cleaner’s, photograph one and send it to other poets. Anything to make sure I made the right choice. The idea of adding one more poem to this anthology and it not being up to snuff made me want to chunder. And the closer I got to choosing one, the more sick I became. Several times I attached a poem to an email to Jenny and then backed out at the last minute, vomiting. No! Not that one! Back into the sack.
And then I found it. The perfect candidate. Beautiful, thought-provoking in every way: sublime. I sent it to Jenny. She wrote back some time later saying ‘okay’, and it was done.
It’s in. It’s on page 245. Just nestling there, happy as a clam. In a way it needs no introduction. If I wasn’t writing seven, I imagine it wouldn’t get one. It’s just a simple tale of a man, a bed and, well, who knows. Of course I’m a gibbering wreck this end, worrying it’s going to stick out because my style has developed in the years between book formats. I’ve done a lot of growing up since the hardback. But still. I’ve been assured, in a separate email from Jenny, that there’s no difference in style or – crucially – quality between this poem and the pre-existing material. That’s good enough for me. I hope you enjoy the poem. Please, please don’t flick forward to it now – find it when you find it – but when you do, please take it in the spirit it is meant. It’s a bonus, is what it is. I hope you enjoy it.
INTRODUCTION
Am I a poet? It’s a question I have often been forced into pondering. I don’t want to be pondering it. I don’t like pondering it. For me, it’s a no-brainer. I am a poet. And yet the insinuations persist. The innuendo. Other people raising the question. Making it an issue. And so I have to ponder it. And I get fed up with it.
I don’t know why I’m asked it, I really don’t. I doubt the other great poets ever had to put up with that kind of bullshit question. The Keatses, you know. Plath. These people would never have had some sad little no-mark come up to them, a sloppy old grin plastered all over their face and ask them, ‘Would you honestly call yourself a poet?’ I doubt Auden would ever have had that. Wordsworth. And yet, honestly, I have to say I’m fielding that question between two and five times a week. Would Pushkin have had that? Is it a factor for McGough?
My response is always dignified.
I’ve got class. I just haul my hardback anthology from my rucksack and I jab my thumb against the cover. ‘Yes, mate!’ I’ll say. ‘Hence why I’ve got a goddamn anthology!’ and I’ll open the sod up and I’ll leaf through, slapping my palm on top of the poems and saying: ‘Is that a poem?’ and ‘And that one? Feels like that’s a poem,’ and ‘What’s that if it’s not a poem?’ Usually, the chump who’s driven me to this comes back with fairly solid answers to these questions, at which point I draw out my iPhone. I find my Wikipedia page and use my thumb and index finger to zone in on the crucial words. ‘Tim Key is a poet’ it says. And I read it out again and again at these helmets. ‘Tim Key is a poet! Say it!’ and by the time I’m trudging off, they’re saying it back to me, and as I get further away they’re corrupting it and saying other things. Variations on a theme. And I jam my fingers in my ears because I don’t want to hear it. Any of it.
Evidently the splodges of writing set on the pages of this book are poems. That much is clear. Indeed, revisiting this book, I saw an opportunity to rectify something that’s been bugging me for a while. In the hardback version I noticed that every poem was introduced by its title, its number and the word ‘poem’. Increasingly I would look at this word and think, ‘Well, that’s totally unnecessary; of course it’s a poem.’ You wouldn’t visit a gallery and see the word ‘art’ scrawled above all the lovely paintings. So why must my book be riddled with this word ‘poem’? I emailed Jenny about this. I told her the only reason we should be writing ‘poem’ in this manner is if we consider there’s some doubt as to what the fuck these things are. She agreed that that would be the only reason. I emailed again and she told me not to worry about it. I emailed saying I wasn’t worried but I’d noticed none of the other poets had the word ‘poem’ above their poems in their anthologies. She emailed back saying she’d make a call on it. Should think so, too. I look like a bloody idiot with the word ‘poem’ written above my poems.
Of course, if I’m not a poet there’s a problem. A big problem. I’ve spent my life thinking I am one, so if the rug gets pulled now, what do I have? If I’m not a poet all that’s left is for me to reflect on the hours, the days, the weeks, the months, the years, the decades, the God-knows-what, that I’ve wasted. All that time glugging the sherry, scratching the parchment: to find out it was for nothing would kill me. These must be poems or otherwise nothing makes sense any more. If they’re not poems then what the hell was I doing all that time? It would be like someone going up to an acclaimed plumber and saying, ‘None of that was plumbing.’ His world would fall apart, poor thing. If someone’s telling him that ‘All that stuff you’ve been doing under sinks over the years, that’s just been basically moving pipes about – you haven’t been plumbing.’ It would kill him. In fact, the most likely outcome would be that he would fight back. He’d say, ‘What? No, I am a plumber. Look, here’s my card.’ And that’s more or less where I am with it. Am I a poet? Yes, here’s my card (my card says ‘Tim Key: Poet’).
So I am a poet then. A professional poet. Published. I’m tempted to say, ‘Don’t take my word for it – read this book and make up your own mind.’ But I think it’s that kind of bombastic statement that’s caused a lot of the problems. I think better to just say: ‘I am a poet – take my word for it.’
INTRODUCTION
I sometimes wonder why I’ve bothered doing this. I really do. I wonder why I have bothered sacrificing the best part of a decade to write a book. I wonder why the hell I’ve done that. I wonder what the Dickens I was thinking. I wonder what the fuck I was playing at.
Obviously, I know that’s not what you want to hear.
I’m the author, so you’re keen to hear news that I’m in control. You want my vibe to be ‘I’ve written a book, I’m happy with it, tuck in.’ That’s what you’ll often see from contemporary authors these days. Go to a book launch, or run into a contemporary author in a café or at a barbecue, and they can generally be found strumming their book smugly against their thigh, purring about its quality. Sometimes they’ll find a makeshift stage at whatever social engagement they happen to be at. They’ll stand on a table or a climbing frame and waggle their book above their heads and say, ‘Yo, arseholes! Check it out!’, or words to that effect, and they’ll swing their book about like it’s their testicles. They’re proud of their efforts, a lot of these contemporary authors, and fair play to them.
It’s not like I don’t like my book. I do. As you start leafing through it, you’ll realise it’s hard not to love. I just wonder whether I should have plunged ten years into it, that’s more the issue. And not just any ten years either. Nope. My thirties. In my darker moments I find it hard to look at that sacrifice, the decade that I have surrendered to this book, without thinking words to the effect of ‘Now why have I done that, then?’ I look back at all the invitations I declined, the possibilities that I passed by, the moments of joy that I traded in for this book. I wonder what else I might have done had I freed up the space that writing this son-of-a-bitch took up. I once turned down the chance to go on a two-day Danish cookery course. Was it worth it?
I’m sat next to it now. My fat arse is splayed onto a sofa and next to me, scuffed up and riddled with red ink, is my manuscript. Its corners are curled up and it’s held in one piece by two huge staples. They are giant, these staples. Proper beasts. At times I can’t look at my manuscript.