Hello everybody,

Andy, great work with this, sorry that it has taken me so long to join! Especially like being able to see everyone's faces in quick succession.

Went to the Faber and Faber 80th Birthday Reading on Tuesday, where Alice Oswald, Paul Muldoon, Daljit Nagra, Wendy Cope and Heaney read...I'd bought the ticket a couple of months ago and it was a sold out Queen Elizabeth Hall...so good to see poetry getting such a massive response, and to see so many ages there. Alice Oswald was incredible, I've been reading 'Dart' recently and am in love with her work anyway, but her reading just adds to the power. She read a poem about life in a village, done through the voice of her next door neighbour that I think might really interest you Judy. Will check what collection it's from and what it's called (I have the flu and my mind is like a seive). Wendy Cope was funny but something I hadn't realised is how she has suffered from depression for much of her life.

They all read pieces from other Faber poets - Cope read Larkin, Heaney read Hughes, Muldoon read Eliot, Nagra read Plath, and then in the second half, their own work. Heaney ended the night with a reading of 'Digging' and a story about how that poem was the start of it all, the changing of his life. And to think he was only 25 when he wrote it, and it still stands strong now.

Great to read work on this blog, and just to tap in to the magic of that week. I can almost feel the hills around me.....