In what has to be one of the more curious book-related stories of the day – and wholly indicative of August – the Times reports on what one railway company in Britain is doing to soothe frustrated travelers complaining the trains never, ever arrive on time. Are they offering free food? Booze? Tickets? Nope. Instead, First Great Western has hired…a poet.
The company, which operates services from Paddington to South Wales and the West Country, insisted yesterday that its decision to engage Cornish poet Sally Crabtree, known in artistic circles as “the pink-wigged pocket Venus from Cornwall”, to perform at selected stations over the next four days had nothing to do with its poor punctuality record, disclosed in The Times yesterday. After performing recently at the Venice Biennale, Crabtree said: “To be the first official Poet on the Platform is a dream come true.”
Commuter groups, not surprisingly, dismissed platform poetry as completely ridiculous. Susan Westlake, of the Oxford pressure group Ox Rail Action, said yesterday: “It made me laugh when I heard about this. If trains are delayed while this poet is performing, I don’t think passengers will be too impressed.” And in what has to be one of the greatest news paragraphs ever, the story continues: “John Dryden said that the chief aim of poetry was to delight; Mussolini said that the first aim of trains was to run on time. There is little hope that the two tracks will converge this week.”