I've been glued to Gabriel Garcia Marquez's memoir, 'Living to Tell the Tale' since I plucked it off the library shelves earlier this week.

In amongst the anecdotes and memories, there's indisputably fine writing, crackling and lightening up the pages.

Some of it, though, is n't always from whom you might suspect. As with this assertion, which sweeps up in both hands what the shocking, seductive, and sacramental power of poetry actually is: 'If poetry does not make my blood run faster, open sudden windows for me on to the mysterious, help me discover the world, accompany this desolate heart in solitude and in love, in joy and enmity, what good is poetry to me'.

This was written by Eduardo Carranza, the beacon of Colombian poetry during the twentieth century.

I simply can't think of a more intoxicating statement, a more passionate and defiant manifesto for poetry than this.

I should carry an emergency book of poems. Something I can dip into for sustenance whatever the circumstance. The joy of reading poetry - aloud if I can - is a sweet I'm finding impossible to put down.

This afternoon was a torment; three of us, strolling through Ravenscourt Park under a soft patter of early summer rain, on into a pocket sized Garden centre that hugs the side of the District Line.

Such a find as well. A quiet cafe full of deep sofas to sink into, small, peaceful fountains, weather beaten Buddhas folded between bushes and shrubs, and the full palette of green, from the lightest to the deepest olive. It cried out for a poem.

I needed to steady my nerves last night, so I turned to my new medicine - reading a poem aloud.

Thanks Anne Sexton, your verses took the tangle out my tiredness and unwrapped the day's stresses and strains. I'll need your help again tonight; today's been a bruiser.