Meanwhile, to help me on my way, my husband has purchased me an electric typewriter. I’ve said to him: ‘Jo, I’m not a secretary anymore, I don’t need to put down 80 words a minute, you know!’ but he seems to think an electric typewriter, rather than the more modest manual chug-along type, will help me break my habits of the past.

I don’t write poetry on a typewriter in the first place, of course, and never have—though it’s true that publishers don’t like to spend their time deciphering spidery hands from the nineteenth century. My new typewriter is a Smith Corona Portable and it fits rather nattily in its nice little case. I wasn’t sure at first, I admit, but it does truly make me feel businesslike. Should John Honey at Vellum muck me about any further, he may not get any more good poetry out of me, but he will get a ferocious business letter from me and my Smith Corona.

I am trying to spend more time with Owen, but he likes it so much at Ornella’s little house, and the country air is so good for him at the Parishes, that I feel selfish if I object to the current arrangement. Hannah’s presence here might tempt him home.

Have you heard anything more about her intentions? I had hoped she would write. But nothing yet. I guess she’s still waiting to hear about university.

With all my love,

Veda xxx

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27 MARCH 1969

Dear Tilde,

I realised yesterday that, reduced to an acronym, Works On Paper becomes WOP. I told this to my husband who became furious with me. I don’t know why. I was quite calm and composed when I pointed it out. I would’ve thought he would’ve wanted to know?

I hardly go to the restaurant these days. And, being the bad wife that I am, I barely take an interest in my husband’s charity work either. Jo is getting quite a name for himself on that front. There was even an article about him in the paper, with a photo of him, looking as though he’d got an unexpected fright. It seems to me, Tilde, that he gets younger and more energetic every day, while I get older and more enervated. I have a terrible furrow in my brow, deep and riven. And really, I can’t be bothered with hair, nails, etcetera. Or not on a daily basis. Look at me: I can barely be bothered with complete sentences. That is what happens with poets eventually: they become so minimalist that they don’t need words at all. Just a sound: a scream perhaps, like that picture by that German Munch (was he German? Or Austrian? Norwegian perhaps).

Might go and put my head in a bucket of sand or something. There’s not much better to do.

Send reason for living,

VEDA xxx

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2 MAY 1969

Dear Tilde,