Journal

Abstract

December ¹975

Early in December I gave a reading in Chicago for Poetry, the most famous and oldest poetry magazine surviving, whose European correspondent was, before the First World War, Ezra Pound. As an English poet, I thought I had an excuse to read work by other English poets than myself, who had published in Poetry. One of these was Louis MacNeice. Lying on my bed in my hotel room, I studied his ‘Bagpipe Music’. In the poem there was the word ‘Ceilidh’ which I could not pronounce, and of which I did not know the meaning. I saw Louis standing at the foot of my bed, looking down at me, with amused contempt in his gaze.