Some of you may remember that I did an event with Alice Sebold, author of Lucky, The Lovely Bones and The Almost Moon, late last year as part of the 2007 Ilkley Literature Festival. We had never met before, had only twenty minutes to chat before the event, and then talked on stage in front of a packed hall who listened in rapt silence to what she had to say, and to her breathtakingly good reading from latest novel The Almost Moon.

And it seemed to me that we had made a connection, just the two of us, on the stage talking easily in front of the audience like old friends.

As usual at the end of the event there was the confusion of author signings, chatting queues around the bookshop and technicians packing away the sound equipment. In a brief lull she managed to thank me, ask me if I had any poems to show her, before disappearing into her public role again. I had by chance a battered reading copy of Coma Songs in my bag which I handed over slightly self-consciously.

Imagine my surprise when last Saturday, seven months later, I received a buff coloured card in a matching envelope through the post. I sat at the kitchen table unable for the first few minutes to work out who had sent it. It was from Alice Sebold and it thanked me for the way I hosted the event and said,

’A rarity for me to find someone who gets it all: the work, the life, the human world we all share.’

And on the envelope, a rather wonderful postscript,

“I would list the poems I found brutal, funny, biting, joyful, f-cking awesome but there would be too many. Perhaps enough to FILL a book’.

I hope Alice Sebold won’t mind me writing about her communication and actually quoting her. It was such a thrill to receive her card, and to have something confirmed.

We had made a connection.