Having arrived rather early for an event featuring Ian Rankin, I was checking out the bookstall when a tall man in a dark suit came and stood beside me. Is that him, I wondered? Surreptitiously, I opened his latest Rebus novel – the author photo confirmed my suspicions. “Hello, Ian,” I said. He smiled and we began to chat. I said that many years ago I’d sent him, via his publisher, a poem I’d written following his appearance on Desert Island Discs in 2006. He had replied, some months later, thanking me and saying it was the first time he’d had a poem dedicated to him.
“That was Sue Lawley’s last Desert Island Discs,” Ian said, rolling his eyes. I nodded, “She was rather tetchy.” Sue, the haughty presenter, had challenged Ian about his gritty depictions of crime, almost implying that he had a disturbed imagination. Ian had responded with his, now famous, riposte – “Most crime writers are actually well-balanced individuals. We get all the dark stuff out on the page. It’s the romance writers you’ve got to watch out for.”
I told Ian that these very words had stimulated my poem ‘Dear Reader, I Murdered Him’ (see below). It was one of the first poems I’d written which was directly inspired by a real-life story. I’d carried on writing poems of this type and they had just been brought together in a book called ‘True’. Taking out an advance copy of my new collection, I showed him the poem. He was nodding as he read it. I then wrote a dedication thanking Ian and signed the book for him. He smiled and shook my hand. Gathering up a copy of his new book, ‘Midnight and Blue’, Ian signed it for me. The dedication reads, ‘From one writer to another’.
Dear Reader, I Murdered Him.
for Ian Rankin
Heaving bosoms…
a
child abused,
the tall, dark stranger…
a
fugitive from justice,
every breathless encounter...
a
padded cell
in the maximum security wing.
Romantic novelists,
stranglers
and machete artistes,
compose
birthday-card ditties
to get phone time and snout.
No
remission
for repeat offenders.
