I wake at 5.25am. My alarm starts at 5.30am. It plays “Lovely Day” by Bill Withers. I check Facebook. I check Twitter. Then I have a twinge of self-hatred for checking Facebook and Twitter. But I am reaching for words, I tell myself.
These are unprecedented times for the author and reader. There are more written words flowing between us than at any other time, and I am part of a privileged generation who knew what it was like before the internet. I ponder this, and check Facebook again.
Poetry is everywhere. It’s in the art of Tracey Emin, in the lyrics of Amy Winehouse. In the Bond film, Skyfall, Judi Dench quotes “Ulysses” by Tennyson. And Adele, who sings the theme tune, started her journey into lyrics by writing poetry. JK Rowling uses poetry through the sorting hat. Maya Angelou was there to laud President Obama with a poem when he became president.
Poetry is most called for when we “haven’t the words”, at times of joy or sadness, reconciliation or separation. If you hear the phrase “It was beyond words”, you can bet it wasn’t.
I’m a morning person. After a shower (I should have meditated), I crunch breakfast, slurp tea, feel rested. I begin work with an attempt to write an original description of dawn in fewer than 140 characters. It takes between 15 minutes and three hours each day. This morning it took 90 minutes. I sat by the computer at 6.15am and by 7.30am I got it:
A pause between end & applause
To the Valkyries’ delight
A graceful bow from darkness
A standing ovation of light
I pressed send. This summer, in the Royal Albert Hall, I presented a Ten Pieces Prom with Naomi Wilkinson, Dion Dublin, Dan Starkey and Leah Boleto. Alpesh Chauhan conducted the BBC Philarmonic and one of the pieces was “The Ride of the Valkyries”.
I am fascinated by that moment, the magical one caught between the end of a performance and the beginning of the applause, where there is nothing but electricity in the air. It’s like dawn, the pause suspended between the certainty of night and the unknowable day ahead. I sit after pressing send. My splayed hands hover above the keyboard. An artist doesn’t need to suffer to create, but if he doesn’t create he will suffer. The day begins.
My description of dawn goes out as a Tweet and on Facebook. At 8.15am I arrive at my favourite cafe in Angel, North London. I continue a script for a BBC Radio 4 programme about Bob Marley. By 11.30 I am being interviewed for a documentary, and then it’s back to Hackney for more filming.
I go for lunch with my agent in Soho – a long lunch during which we talk projects, gossip and all the good stuff. By 5pm I am back in Angel at the cafe. I continue working on a different script until 7pm. I’ll be recording it at the BBC next week, for a series called Origin Stories.
In the evening I get my book face on and begin De Profundis and Other Writings by Oscar Wilde in preparation for my reading of De Profundis at Reading prison, where he was once an inmate. Other readers include Patti Smith and Maxine Peake.
I think in poetry – free verse mainly – and speak in inadequate sentences. Most of us do.
I’ll just check my Facebook page again. I think Matt Haig has said something funny about depression on Twitter. Oh look a Trump gif. Type: “Matt. That’s funny that is.” Press send. Miranda Sawyer’s on a book tour. My mate Sophie Willan is smashing Edinburgh. Type “Well done Sophie”. Press Send. Check email.
• Lemn Sissay’s Gold from the Stone is published by Canongate.
