[Jayne Osborn]

Does anyone else have strong views on my own bugbear - the person who attends a poetry reading with the published volume in hand and follows the text with a finger?

Ann,

I've only ever done it once, but the circumstances were exceptional. Do you remember Steve Bucknell's long-running, wonderful thread about R P Lister? Here it is

I went to the recitation - not a reading - of this amazing gentleman's poems (he's nearly 100 and he was there). The actor Donald Pelmear, who recited the poems from The Idle Demon, was marvellous; he remembered almost every poem in it, word for word.

I simply had to follow him with the book in my hands, I was so astounded. (But it's what actors do; how in the world does anyone learn every word of a Shakespeare play?) I know I couldn't. Just as well that I never aspired to become an actress!

Jayne