Tuesday

I'm so excited. This morning we recorded my poems for the Edith Sitwell installation, Words in My Head (www.coastival.com) in a real studio. My collaborator, composer Matt Barnard, was sound engineer and was very calming and competent. I had two friends from the Scarborough Poetry Workshop, Felix Hodcroft and Rosie Larner, reading the poems and they did an excellent job. Even when Matt wanted to record them breathing in different ways!

It felt like I was in one of those docu-films of all night-ers putting down an album with the ba-i-and. Every now and again I would go over and press the intercom with the studio and "direct" with a little suggestion on a word being emphasised or not.

I also get a huge buzz from hearing my poetry performed well. I quite enjoy doing it myself, but when I do that I can't hear them properly as the nerves appear to make me slightly deaf. So it's an enormous treat to have them gifted to me as Felix and Rosie did this morning.

I'm still more than a little carried away by the moment.