Before the red light

An original literary non-fiction-style account of preparing to read a poem for a community radio recording.

The producer had placed my name beside the microphone. Beneath it she had written 'poet', a word I could say comfortably about other people. I slid my folded page out of its envelope. It was a poem about my grandfather, and I had agreed to record it because the station was collecting memories of the neighbourhood. He had lived above the bakery for forty years. It seemed wrong that the programme might remember the building without anyone mentioning him.

At home, I had practised reading it to an empty kitchen. In the studio, the same words felt less securely mine. I noticed the clock, the water glass and the producer's finger resting above a button. Each object seemed to be waiting for me to do something correctly.

She asked whether I wanted to try a few lines without recording. I began with the description of his coat. Then I reached the phrase he always used when someone thanked him. I had written it in English. It was accurate enough, but hearing it aloud made him sound like a courteous stranger. In the language he had used at home, the phrase had been shorter, warmer and faintly teasing.

I stopped. The producer waited. I explained that I had translated his words because I thought listeners might otherwise feel excluded. Now I was afraid that, in making the poem easier to understand, I had removed the part that belonged most clearly to him. She said that a recording did not have to be finished that afternoon.

Outside, I telephoned my sister and asked her to say the phrase. She laughed before she repeated it. That small laugh was not in my poem either. I put the page back in its envelope and told the producer I would return with a revised version.

Explain why the narrator decides to revise the poem before recording it.