“Poetry,” for Lavinia Greenlaw, “isn’t about autobiography; why would you care about me, you’ve only met me for five minutes!” There are many reasons why one would care about Lavinia Greenlaw: she is undisputedly one of our most important contemporary writers. I confess myself an avid reader and copier-out of her poems.

Hearing them read by Greenlaw herself (from her third collection, The Casual Perfect) as well as her reflections on seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painting, and mystic iPods, was an experience to be cherished. “Getting older,” she explained, “I feel like I’m coming into the casual perfect time of my life,” adding offhandedly, “it feels like a very middle-aged tense.” Greenlaw is a fantastic – and clearly very experienced – reader. She knows exactly how to convey the white space on the page, as well as voicing the words themselves with exquisite precision. This was one of those ‘only in Cambridge’ evenings: the opportunity to listen to, and question, one of the most important poets writing today. And, just as importantly, perhaps, an insight into a very un-Cambridge calm. 

For a writer whose work is famous for its precision and elegance, her description of her ‘acceptance of incompleteness – that the lack of fixity is no great drama’, was unexpected. Asked towards the end of the discussion about the function of poetry, she replied: “it will never take over, but it always persists. It just happens.” Lavinia Greenlaw was perfect, casually: more of you should have been there.