Last night I was lucky enough to have ninety minutes with my most favourite novellist. Not that he calls himself a novellist. He believes he is first and foremost a poet. All the while I'm quietly despairing that the writer of the greatest book ever written doesn't even class himself as a writer of books.
Vikram Seth is a genius. The 21st century J.R.R. Tolkien. And in a lecture theatre at London School of Economics, he chatted to the crowd, whilst occasionally topping up his wine glass with what he called the 'lubricant of life'.
He was there to discuss 'Friendship and Poetry' but I would have been happy if he'd just talked about the shop he did at Sainsbury's yesterday. He was consistently witty, charming, and poetic in everything he said.
Vikram read a number of poems to us, including some 8th century Chinese poetry which he had translated himself. And I came to realise something about poetry, which I have never really had enough of an appreciation for: reading poetry is like reading the lyrics of a song; what you really need is someone to sing it for you. And in his own melodic way, that is just what Vikram did.
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