Letter: Poetic licence

Sir: Adam Horovitz really is an angry young man. This, however, is not because of some purported spat with his father ("Son gives rhyme and reason . . ." 15 October). It is because he has been misrepresented by Sam Taylor.

I went to the Murray Lachlan Young/Jessica D'Este event at the Cheltenham Literature Festival with some apprehension, given all that I have read and heard about him - especially from my father, Michael Horovitz, whose opinion I respect. I was pleasantly surprised by Young's performance.

I did not cheer throughout "Simply Everyone's Taking Cocaine"; that would have been a crass response to a poem written to express the awfulness of cocaine. Nor did I "whoop it up" at any point.

What I did do was approach Ms Taylor afterwards and, because I disagree with my father's stand, say: "Murray Lachlan Young has done almost as much for poetry in the last five months as my father has done in the last five years, in that he has given poets a cause to follow. Whatever you think of his verse."

In truth, Michael has done more for international poetry in the last 40 years than almost anyone else. No one in the "Establishment" has enabled so many good new voices to be heard.

ADAM HOROVITZ

Stroud, Gloucestershire