World Book Night - March 5th

Today is a red letter day - I've just heard that I'm one of the people lucky enough to be taking part in World Book Night on March 5th - another red letter day.

It's a fantastic scheme : twenty thousand people are going to be given forty-eight copies of various books to hand out to all and sundry.  It's the first time that it has been run in this country (and possibly anywhere in the world) and is a wonderful way of bringing writers, publishers and the general public together in a celebration of the fantastic richness of the written word.

At a time when the future of printed books is as uncertain as it has been since Gutenberg invented the printing press, thanks to the advent of electronic media, this is an amazing gesture of faith in the important part that books play in all our lives. Both writers and publishers have shown considerable generosity in allowing the twenty-five chosen titles to be given away for free, in doing so providing the people who are going to be doing the hands-on stuff a chance to act as advocates for stories and poetry that really matter to them.

I shall be in Bristol, handing out copies of The World's Wife, an anthology of poems by the Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, pressing them on unsuspecting strangers, and if they're friendly and want to listen, I'll try and explain to them how, as a teenager, poetry changed and possibly saved my life, and that maybe it can do the same for them.