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News from Alpha Centauri

I got lucky in 1971. In that year’s Booker prize I came 2nd, or so Saul Bellow, one of the judges, said. Coming 2nd, of course, was like coming 102nd; nevertheless it boosted my ego, which got a further shot in the arm when the International Biographical Centre, based in Cambridge, wrote and said they would be pleased to include my entry in their International Who’s Who in Poetry. I was flattered, but there were two problems. The book cost £18, which I didn’t have. And I hadn’t written a line of poetry.

But it seemed a shame to let them down, so I got to work on their entry form. Immediately I ran into problems with Education. My record looked pretty flimsy, not at all the sort of schooling you expect a top international poet to have had. So I spiced it up with a spell at the Spanish Academy in Vienna. That’s where they train those Lipizzaner horses to prance on their hind legs, and I’ve always fancied a couple of terms there. Next came Positions Held. I couldn’t write: ‘None’. So I wrote: ‘Self-employed travelling blacksmith, Somerset & Glos., 1968–’. Not enough poets are out in the countryside, practising the noble art of the farrier, getting their soft hands dirty, dreaming up rhymes for ‘horseshoe’.

Then I hit Published Works. Tricky. I summoned up all the creative juices but the cold hard fact was I hadn’t published any poetry. At that moment, my wife came in and said, ‘If Teresa King calls . . .’ The message was complex, and I wasn’t listening. If Teresa King Calls was just the sort of daft title a poet would give a slim volume of verse. I entered it, added a few more bits of tosh and bunged the form in the post.

The International Biographical Centre gratefully printed the lot. I was now a registered poet, still without £18 for the book, but I managed a fiver and bought their Certificate of Merit (‘For Distinguished Contributions to Poetry’) and hung it in the loo where it covered

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I got lucky in 1971. In that year’s Booker prize I came 2nd, or so Saul Bellow, one of the judges, said. Coming 2nd, of course, was like coming 102nd; nevertheless it boosted my ego, which got a further shot in the arm when the International Biographical Centre, based in Cambridge, wrote and said they would be pleased to include my entry in their International Who’s Who in Poetry. I was flattered, but there were two problems. The book cost £18, which I didn’t have. And I hadn’t written a line of poetry.

But it seemed a shame to let them down, so I got to work on their entry form. Immediately I ran into problems with Education. My record looked pretty flimsy, not at all the sort of schooling you expect a top international poet to have had. So I spiced it up with a spell at the Spanish Academy in Vienna. That’s where they train those Lipizzaner horses to prance on their hind legs, and I’ve always fancied a couple of terms there. Next came Positions Held. I couldn’t write: ‘None’. So I wrote: ‘Self-employed travelling blacksmith, Somerset & Glos., 1968–’. Not enough poets are out in the countryside, practising the noble art of the farrier, getting their soft hands dirty, dreaming up rhymes for ‘horseshoe’. Then I hit Published Works. Tricky. I summoned up all the creative juices but the cold hard fact was I hadn’t published any poetry. At that moment, my wife came in and said, ‘If Teresa King calls . . .’ The message was complex, and I wasn’t listening. If Teresa King Calls was just the sort of daft title a poet would give a slim volume of verse. I entered it, added a few more bits of tosh and bunged the form in the post. The International Biographical Centre gratefully printed the lot. I was now a registered poet, still without £18 for the book, but I managed a fiver and bought their Certificate of Merit (‘For Distinguished Contributions to Poetry’) and hung it in the loo where it covered the damp patch and impressed the hell out of visitors. Ever since, publishers of biographical works of reference have been writing to me. I get three or four letters a year. Maybe they swap mailing lists; I don’t know. They range from the dear old IBC in Cambridge – I’ve worked my way up to their book Men of Achievement – to Debrett’s People of Today, Burke’s Peerage’s World Book of Robinsons, and an outfit in North Carolina called the American Biographical Institute, Inc., which included me in their own Men of Achievement, 1992, and in Personality of the Year, 1998, and just the other day in Great Minds of the 21st Century. How my Great Mind also made it into Who’s Who in Entertainment (published by Marquis in New Jersey) only the editors can explain. All these wonderful people have one thing in common. They want my money, usually at a special saving if I respond now. Prices vary. For instance, Debrett offered me People of Today, pre-publication, for a very reasonable £99. Men of Achievement from IBC would set me back £75 (Grand Edition), £150 (De Luxe) or £295 (Royal, with the recipient’s name on the front cover). Personality of the Year rewarded the winner with a decree on white parchment for $195 or laminated on to mahogany for $295. The decree would carry a suitable citation, designating me as ‘a personality of commendable respect’. (Well, I should hope so: I’m a bloody poet, aren’t I?) It was reassuring to be told that ‘all hand-lettered penning’ was done ‘by a skilled scribe’. You don’t want your friends pointing out spelling mistakes in your eulogy. But merit, like everything else, has been hit by inflation, and those of us who are ‘Great Minds of the 21st Century’ must be prepared to fork out for the privilege. Cheapskates can settle for a proclamation Plaque at only $295; however, the publishers are dedicated to highlighting ‘your proficiency to achieve distinction in your particular area of authority’, which includes ‘how your great mind has worked to help influence and pave the way for many individuals’, and obviously the full details are only in the book, which is $395. Why stop there? Get the Great Minds Medal, ‘finished in a radiant golden tone’ and priced at only $595. Or you can get all three for a smidgen over a grand. The commendations kept coming in the mail, year after year. The treatment they got depended on how I felt that day. Some I binned. Others I answered because I wanted to be reminded of my identity (I’m in the directory, so I must exist). The rest got the Walter Mitty treatment. In 1991 the IBC wanted to honour me with inclusion in their Dictionary of International Biography (de luxe edition, bound in simulated leather, £125). Suddenly my memory of past employment cleared, and I listed roustabout, crop-duster, bit-part actor, plumber’s mate, football referee, bartender and demolition worker. Under ‘Creative Works’ I offered five novels, one each in French, Dutch, Swedish, Spanish and Greek. For ‘Honours’ I created the eminent Theta Phi Omega award, 1970. If it doesn’t exist, then it ought to, and I deserve it as much as the next poet. Former crop-dusters and plumber’s mates, fluent in five languages, who write novels in Swedish or Greek rather than English: these birds are rare. Evidently the IBC (‘entries will be carefully compiled by skilled editors’) was pleased with mine, because they came back for more in Men of Achievement. My list of past employment now looked dated, so I scrapped those jobs and offered better ones: deckhand, blackjack dealer, egg-sexer, mule-catcher, sound-effects man. I stuck to the multilingual writing and threw in a new novel, in Finnish. Fresh honours and prizes that had been thrust upon me included one from the Theta Phi Omega Beta Alpha Centauri Fraternity, and another from BBDO (Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborne, the Madison Avenue agency I worked for in the Sixties; my headlines for Du Pont Fabrics were much admired). American publishers of reference books got the same treatment. Nobody complained. Nobody sent me a fax, saying Just give us the facts, stupid. Nobody quizzed me about my career as private secretary to Lord Lucan, or my recent award from the Robert Maxwell Cultural Institute, or the news that my Career to Date is covered by the Official Secrets Act. I dropped a heavy hint by announcing that my Area of Expertise is literary deception, and that my latest publication is called Chutzpah in Spades, but no eyebrows were raised. Only once was I tempted to buy a book. Barons, the highpowered American business publisher, wrote and said they’d reserved me an entire full page in The Barons 500: Leaders for the New Century, and ‘your portrait photograph will be prominently featured’. Wow! To give me an idea of the kudos in store, they sent a sample page. It showed a smiling Bill Gates. Double wow! Bill and I were two of the 500 leaders taking the world into the 21st century! Then I read on. Barons wanted cash in advance. No cheque, no page. The book would finance itself before publication. How much? Well, the Harvard Collection of two de luxe volumes (one for the office) came in at $895, postage paid. Was I worth it? Obviously, or Barons wouldn’t have picked me out from the great heaving mass of talented achievers to be one of the top 500 in the world. Did I have 895 bucks? Alas, no. And so another hero got the chop. First Robert Maxwell, then me.

Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 7 © Derek Robinson 2005


About the contributor

Derek Robinson lives in Bristol. Apart from novels about the RFC and RAF, he has cornered a very small niche: books on the laws of rugby football. He plays more squash than his friends, or his knees, think wise.

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