Pressure is on as poet warms up for Wimbledon service
By ANIWednesday, May 19, 2010
LONDON - Authorities at the Wimbledon Championships have announced the first official poet of the historic sporting event.
According to The Times, Matt Harvey has been tasked with the responsibility of writing a daily verse for the world’s oldest tennis tournament.
When The Times met him at Centre Court at the All England Tennis and Croquet Club he was searching for inspiration from the umpire’s chair.
“I want to write about the umpire’s empire. He’s the potentate of an empire that doesn’t extend very far. He doesn’t rule over all, but he can overrule,” said Harvey.
Harvey is best known for his appearances on Saturday Live on BBC Radio 4. He will join the small club of tennis-inspired poetry that includes John Betjeman’s A Subaltern’s Love Song, in which the narrator loses a match to the “furnish’d and burnish’d” Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.
Harvey has been told he can write whatever he wants, but he feels under pressure to include certain traditions.
He said: “I’ve got to make sure I touch upon strawberries and cream, Cliff Richard and barley water. They are clichis, but I feel I ought to put them in because I want to start with people’s shared experience of Wimbledon and expand upon it.” (ANI)
