The task of the artist at any time is uncompromisingly simple – to discover what has not yet been done, and to do it. - Craig Raine

Great writers arrive among us like new diseases – threatening, powerful, impatient for patients to pick up their virus, irresistible.

In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
That snores when you pick it up.
If the ghost cries, they carry it
To their lips and soothe it to sleep
With sounds. And yet, they wake it up
Deliberately, by tickling with a finger.

Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
And some are treasured for their markings –
They cause the eyes to melt
Or the body to shriek without pain.