She Loves London

The London blog for locals.

  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • London
    • The Good Bits
    • Survival Guides
    • Commuting
    • At Street Level
    • Things You Must Do
    • Tried and Tested
    • Dogs
  • Life
    • Travels
    • Thoughts
  • Newsletter

Southbank’s Literary Takeaway

07.01.2012 by She Loves London // 2 Comments

I hung about, biding my time and watching from a distance.

A grey haired woman approached and was turned away, and in response her feet turned inward like a pigeon and her knees jiggled with barely reined-in excitement.

Ha! Keen-o. I thought, as she walked off, embarrassed, and I edged a little bit closer so as not to miss my chance.

“Get there early” my friend had warned, “they said aim for 11:45am, before the queue starts”.

The clock neared 12pm and as if by magic, other people nearby who I’d had down as mere casual bystanders made a beeline for the van. Word had obviously spread.

20120701-094543.jpg

It works like this. You queue up and, when called, approach your designated chef and place your order.

Who’s it for?

“It’s for me.”

The ingredients?

“London with a dash of ain’t life grand, please”. Your chef talks to you a little, asking questions and scraping around for any extra information he might need so he gets it just right.

“Ok. That should do it.” he looks down at the sheet of paper dotted with ideas and comments, “come back in half an hour, and it should be ready” he says, and you skip off to await the results.

20120701-094749.jpg

In the end, the Poetry Takeaway delivers what is surely the best sort of poem – one written with you in mind. And one that doesn’t require close reading analysis with an accompanying text book.

The result? A lovely warm little feeling and your very own 15 line verse read out loud by your designated poet – sorry, chef – before being packaged in a little envelope, stamped, and delivered into your hands.

20120701-094453.jpg

Nicely done, Poetry Takeaway. You can come again.

PS. Today was the last day. Just in case you go hunting for it along Southbank this week. But if you’re a bit jealous of my poem, then I do a nice line in Haikus. Just let me know. I’ll sort you out.

Categories // Tried and Tested Tags // southbank

Comments

  1. Clarissa Aykroyd says

    2nd July 2012 at 3:27 pm

    Sadly I didn’t end up getting a takeaway poem, but I did have a couple of poems prescribed by the Emergency Poet, and I loved that. Poetry Parnassus was such an amazing occasion.

    Reply
    • sheloveslondon says

      2nd July 2012 at 3:29 pm

       Oh! I think I saw the Emergency Poet, was that in the ambulance a few yards down from the Takeaway van? They were on lunch when I went past, I wanted to investigate. (It occurs to me that anyone reading this comment out of context is likely to be baffled.)

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Welcome to She Loves London

A blog about the way local Londoners rent, live, love, commute and elbow each other out of the way when running for a bus. Let's all be hungover together.

Newsletter

Get an email about London straight to your inbox.

On the subject of…

  • At Street Level
  • Commuting
  • Dogs
  • Everything Else
  • Further Reading
  • London Life Survival Guides
  • The Good Bits
  • Things You Must Do
  • Travels
  • Tried and Tested

Can’t see it? Find it:

Recent Comments

  • Roy Adlam on The Good Bits of London: Exmouth Market, EC1
  • She Loves London on A Guide to Commuting on the Metropolitan Line from Pinner
  • Gloria Langridge on A Guide to Commuting on the Metropolitan Line from Pinner
  • Cakes on I Went Back to Fabric After 7 Years and Found the Queue Quite Stressful
  • Pat Sutton on One Reason You Should Visit Piccadilly Circus

Archives

Copyright © 2025 · Modern Studio Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in