Which author would you like to phone, just for a chat?

[Ilze]

If I were more bold - and let me add that Prof Joan Hambidge was the supervisor of my thesis! - I'd like to phone her and chat quite candidly with her. I fear doing this because of her image as a lesbian, a woman who has a quick temper and little time to waste on "niceties".

What would I ask her?
Why does poetry get rejected from journals such as "New Contrast", or why didn't she like the poem I sent her a year or two ago (first she said she liked it, then she didn't). Maybe I'd like to understand what makes her giggle happily in the photos you see of her on the net ... maybe I just get the feeling that she has a big heart in spite of her hard public persona.

My thesis was on poets who cannot be contacted anymore: Ingrid Jonker, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton ... writing it was a way of trying to "contact" them/understand them. - wouldn't it be an amazing experience to ask these people directly about their poetry??!!

[Ilze]

Mispa, I've always dreamt of being in one of Umberto Eco's semiotics classes ... but alas, I don't understand Italian + imagine the 'varsity fees for something like that??!