Wasting time on Twitter? Don’t you believe it …

People often ask me what I see in Twitter. It’s not a medium for grown-ups, they say; who wants to know if you’ve just had an egg for breakfast, or whether you’re watching the Test Match? And there’s a guilty, grumpy little bit of me that agrees with them.

But I witter on pompously about the reassurance of having other writers around to share the difficulties of writing anything worth reading, or indeed of writing anything at all, and about how they can put the occasional moments of black despair into a sensible context. I talk about the valued friendship and understanding of people you’ve never met, but whom you know through what they write. I try to tell them about Ian McMillan’s tweets, that sometimes light up a moment like switching on a torch on a dark night.

And, most enthusiastically I show them about the poems, articles, columns and essays that the people I follow lead me to. But it’s suddenly occurred to me that I’m wasting time and – shamefully – words. All I need to do is point them to a poem I read a while ago, by a poet I’d never heard of, that has helped me to seize the importance of the moment – even, I suppose, if that means breakfast eggs and the Test Match. For me, it’s life-changing. And without Twitter, I’d never have seen it.

So thank you, Emma Simon, and thank you Twitter.

Plait


[Prole Laureate winner, 2013
]
 

A Tritina

The trick is to hold three braids in two hands


and ignore the logistics of mornings.

Wind the first over the second, then cross

the third over the first, and so on. Don’t get cross


with wriggly fidgeting or arguments, slipping like hoarded minutes, out of hand.

Keep a zen-like calm in your fingers. Remember, even school mornings

don’t last forever. Focus on this unremarkable Tuesday morning,

the soft nape and collar crease beneath the wonky plait. Let the yin yang of its criss cross


weave a tender magic, like a proverb handed

across the generations, mourning there is never enough time, nor enough hands.