To avoid Donald Trump, I went to a book launch

This week, poet and artist Frieda Hughes took her mind off the US president’s state visit by spending her evenings in the company of esteemed literary friends

From Paris to China Via the Royal Academy

I shrugged off Mid-Wales

And wiped the floodwater from my feet in the doorway of Daunt’s

To be greeted by Jane, as slim as she was Thynne

In her striking reds for an ‘Appointment in Paris’.

We toasted her pages; our many faces were sunflowers

Gazing up at her glittering from her balcony speech.

Daylight directed my visit to Kiefer. Overpowering his own idol

In gold and size, the scale of enormity invisibly split for gallery entry,

His twigs and a scythe embellished the inches of oil and acrylic

And the sediment of electrolysis that fixed the mind to the canvas

As if it were stitched in. And then at Christie’s

Gyles Brandreth and Michele felt like old friends

In the gateway welcome of Snowdon and Greig

Who had nailed down the necessary elements

To embellish the stage from which flying wild swans

Would soar into the night sky over London

When Jung Chang stood before us and set them free,

So that something born of China could live, breathe

And bear testament to the secrecies

Of which we are otherwise ignorant.