Ian Duhig was in Ilkley at The Grove Bookshop recently to read from his new collection, An Arbitrary Light Bulb. He began by reading a poem called Converse, which takes the inspiration for the Ilkley Fountain as its starting point. Before he read the poem, Ian quoted from the poet Michael Longley: “If prose is a river, then poetry is a fountain.”
I am increasingly struck when I see Sphagnum Moss by how these tiny plants look like stars, and how looking down at an area of Sphagnum can feel like gazing into the night sky, so the poem felt resonant with how ideas around this theme are evolving.
