DATELINE: 12th October 2001

SNORKELLING POET
The Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, has revealed that he's a keen snorkeller - and his interest in the pastime inspired his contribution to the recent National Poetry Day.
Radio plays a major part in the event and, when it ran on October 4, Andrew was invited to speak about the event and cite his own poem on Radio 4's Today programme.
Granted the programme's Thought for the Day slot, Andrew referred to the "vital role that poetry can play at moments of crisis, whether they be international and large scale, or personal".
The theme for this year was 'Journeys' and, in his own contribution, Andrew expressed a spiritual experience attained through snorkelling.
"Poetry, by taking us somewhere else in our heads, can offer solace from the terrible experiences of the world, without evading them or being escapist," he said. "This is what I have tried to do in my own contribution. It remembers a time I went snorkelling - something I enjoy - and had what I can only describe as a miniature vision of the afterlife.
"And that, as I say, is one of poetry's gift's to us. It helps us to understand the world - even in a sense to deal with it - but it also expands the world, and ourselves."

DIVING
The moment I tire
of difficult sand-grains
and giddy pebbles,
I roll with the punch
of a shrivelling wave
and am cosmonaut

out past the fringe
of a basalt ledge
in a moony sea-hall
spun beyond blue.
Faint but definite
heat of the universe

Flutters my skin,
quick fish apply
as something to love
what with their heads
Of gong-dented gold;
plankton I push

an easy way through
would be dust or dew
in the world behind
if that mattered at all,
which is no longer true,
with its faces and cries.

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