Anthony Hett

Biography

With a face younger than my years and an ever increasing CV, I am a London based – but willing to travel - hardworking and ambitious 28 year old writer. Available for gigs, commissions and residencies, I am also an enthusiastic and experienced workshop facilitator (CRB checked February 2012), who has been working with children and young people of all ages and abilities for 6 years and performing as a Spoken Word Artist around London and the UK for 4 years. You can read, watch and listen to further examples of my work and generally find out more on my website: www.anthonyhett.co.uk you can also follow me on twitter: https://twitter.com/anthonyhett and on a final, non-writing more personal note: I'm 5 foot 8 if I stand up nice and straight. I likes to pull faces in mirrors when I think nobody is there. I likes to sing, but only when I thinks no one can here. I brushes his teeth as often as he can remember, (I ahve a bad memory) I showers at least once a day and I always sneezes in pairs.

Samples

Plane couple (I wonder) Half way back to London from Athens, somewhere over the South of France. I spy a young couple, who to my untrained eye would appear to be from Japan. I consider him to be a lot more attractive than her. I wonder how they met and if that maybe she is considered to be more attractive than him back home in Japan. I notice that they both read books printed in English and from the movement of their mouths I determine that they might be talking to one another in English too. I wonder if they are therefore from London and on their way home too, like me. I wonder if I will ever really consider London to be my home. I wonder what all this wondering really says about me. ©Anthony Hett (2012) Daphne's Flat I went to my girlfriends flat after dark she isn't there for she is back in Greece for the summer leaving me here all alone. at least we have the weather I just need my best friend here to share it with. I push the front door open and breath in two lungs full of familiar memory retrieving aroma. Just 9 months earlier this was all new to me but tonight it's like stepping back into my second home only a black and white empty landscape version of a warm and cosy flat we normally share almost every night I was here just 36 hours before but as the door closes behind me I feel naughty like I shouldn't be here at all I'm a school kid whose been caught throwing stones at passing cars. for it's her grandmothers flat and if Daphne isn't here neither should I be. but the washing machine in my flat is broken and weekend and evening calls to Greece are free from her phone and so you see I am here semi-legitimately it's not like I picked the lock or would even know how I do have permission I do have a key. I go in. It's all a bit quiet, all a bit too still and far too tidy for Daphne to be home. I empty my bags out on the beige hall floor and arrange my washing into neat little piles whites, darks, jeans and wool shit I forgot the towels the first wash goes in and then from there it's a pretty dull evening of internet surfing and bad tv until eventually she texts me the number to call I position myself comfortably in the old arm chair my nervous finger hovering over the old fashioned corded phone she answers in Greek It's so amazing to hear her voice and we talk well into the night but its getting late and we play that game where you say goodbye a thousand times but nobody actually hangs up before she does and I sit and listen for a short second hoping she may pick up again and it's then that I start to hear them funny little noises outside on the scaffolding that are probably nothing but slightly unnerving. It's just my imagination anyone who wants to be a poet must have an over active one so I convince myself that I'm inside the sequel to the film 'The Strangers' and there is a psycho killer outside the window whose going to... I close all the curtains tight it won't keep him out but it keeps me less scared I go to bed. The bed has never felt so big and so empty What the fuck am I doing here on my own? I keep expecting her to come out of the bathroom and jump into bed, but alas she will not cuddle me off to sleep this night. I lie awake restless a kitten snatched from it's mother weeks too soon but then to my surprise I have fallen asleep and find myself dreaming that the psycho killer has climbed in through the window and is hoping into bed. Shit. But it's ok he's less serial killer and more serial hugger The last thing he wants is for anyone to wind up dead. It appears just like me all he wants is a sleepy night time cuddle instead. (and who am I to say no?) ©Anthony Hett (2010) Time Machine My friend Joe invented a time machine and said I should have a go. So I climb onto the ramshackle invention cobbled together using a microwave and an old exercise bike and think out loud. 'If this is so easy, why hasn't it been done before?' When I'm flung forward five years in time and find myself walking down a crowded London high street and it's instantly apparent that my girlfriend is no longer my girlfriend for I walk with a pretty stranger at my side holding my hand the way only a lover can. I panic and start to run. Breaking free of her weak grip I feel the wind through my hair. It's been year since I last ran like this, with childlike exuberance darting and weaving in and out of the evening commuters and happy shoppers and all I can think about is finding my girlfriend. But where to start? Is she still in London and if so what part? Or is she now in New York or Venice like we discussed or even back home in Greece. When something catches my eye. I have just run past our favourite restaurant and as I stop to catch my breath, I see the two people at our usual table. Me and my girlfriend only five years older, her sporting a baby bump and a ring on her wedding finger. I study my reflection in the window pane. It's not me, I'm not me, I'm Joe. I don't know what machine he has invented but I like what it has to show. ©Anthony Hett (2010)

All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others' poems.