Two Poems

Letters

Vol. 7 No. 22 · 19 December 1985

SIR: I have become totally charmed, zapped, entranced, amused by the poetry and wit of Miss Fiona Pitt-Kethley, whose work you have had the vision to publish from time to time in your estimable paper. Her drollery and delight in obscene piquancy appear to power the freshest voice I have read in years. Acid, too, has she. Although I am 60, a defrocked astrologer and recluse-about-town who meditates on the Self continually, I seem to be hopelessly in love with her, as I suspect one or two in your shop are as well.

I note that a book of her poetry has been published, The Tower of Glass, although you neglect to name the publisher. Since with free trade rampant there does not seem to be one bookstore in New York City that stocks English publications, I hazard the gambit of sending you $15 in the hope that someone in your office might have the good will to buy it for me and ship it to this country – keeping what’s left over for a drink in Fiona’s name. I would also like her date, time and place of birth, if such information is in the public realm, and should you be communicado with the young genius, will you tell her she is not without admirers in the New World.

Robert Hanlon
New York City

The publication details proved hard to obtain at the time: The Tower of Glass was published by the Mariscat Press at £3.

Editor, ‘London Review’

Vol. 8 No. 2 · 6 February 1986

SIR: Robert Hanlon (Letters, 19 December 1985) will be pleased to hear that Chatto will be publishing Fiona Pitt-Kethley’s first full-length collection of poems, Sky Ray Lolly, in April. It will, I’m sure, leave him – and her many other fans – even more ‘charmed, zapped, entranced, amused’.

Andrew Motion
Chatto, London WC2