OVER the last few years I’ve noticed it’s become a thing for poets to read from mobiles. Not me, I’ve still got the sort of Nokia that any self-respecting lag can smuggle round the nick. Not only that, I need bins to read the screen.

While I have the older person’s correct disdain for technology, it’s not just that which riles me. People are face down in mobile phones wherever I go, all the time. Stage space just isn’t established when you see one on stage. I don’t think you’re taking the time to talk to an audience when you’re mumbling into a screen. I don’t think you’ve taken care and precision over your writing when you’re scrolling through your phone, though I do like the irony that the scroll is an outdated form of reading.

One result of so much information being online is that hardly any of it is believable. At least a sheet of paper or a notebook is a physical thing that shows there’s some substance to your work, or something to be challenged if not.