Nicholas Jones26 Dec 2002

Thank you for reading my poem on Boxing Day. I hope you had a very merry Christmas. As regards hope, it's not really my thing. The poem is about the attempt to fabricate hope, and the failure to do so, and so it's not really a hopeful poem at all. It's all very political. The line 'our ideology is not a joke' always seemed very clumsy to me (it's hard to read with the correct rhythm) but absolutely vital - this is about people who believe in what they do, but realise it's very, very hard.