In just over a week’s time, the Frankfurt Book Fair will draw thousands of publishers from around the world, not least New York. No one is yet sure of the extent to which military action could put real life on hold, but so far the Americans are showing remarkable sang froid. Hardly any are letting the events of 11 September stand in their way. The Fair will take place amid heightened security, as it did in the 1970s when the threat came from the Baader Meinhof guerrilla group.
Bestseller Tom Clancey spent a week bouncing from one US TV studio to another, discussing how one of his plots – in which a plane is flown at the White House – suddenly became grim reality.

It seems unlikely that the terrorists needed any help, but perhaps troops waiting to be sent into Afghanistan could use a bit of inspiration from Ranulph Fiennes. His latest novel, The Secret Hunters – due from Little, Brown next month – takes its cue from a postwar group whose goal it was to hunt down evil-doers and bring them to justice.The annual batch of awards for translation, on Monday, featured a timely victor in the French section. Barbara Bray won for her version of On Identity (Harvill) by the Lebanese-French writer Amin Maalouf – a wise and humane argument against tribalism of all kinds. The British Centre for Literary Translation at UEA, which co-ordinates the awards, has produced a handsome free sampler of recent translated literature, Rearranging the World; it’s available from the Centre at: literarytranslation There are still tickets left for one of the highlights of National Poetry Day this Thursday: the reading at St Paul’s, Covent Garden, with Andrew Motion, Simon Armitage, Lavinia Greenlaw and Hugo Williams. It’s called “Here to Eternity”, the title of the Poet Laureate’s new anthology, and starts at 7pm. Tickets (£5, £4 concs) include a glass of wine; available from Borders on 020-7379 8877. Haiku lovers can mark the big day by trying to win a trip to next year’s Aldeburgh Poetry Festival in our competition; for details, see page 10.The word is that Lord Archer is “wonderfully perky” inside, and working “intensively” on a novel, even though engaging in business (which he is surely doing) is forbidden to those residing at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.

A second career beckons: he is spending all his free time and excess energy making pots Perhaps to put money in.. If it hadn’t been for “the intervention of really important teachers”, Jo Shapcott might have ended up not in poetry, but in synchronised swimming. She started writing stories and poems as a child, at a time when “playing with the language” is “almost like Plasticene or mud or clay”. When her focus shifted, first to synchronised swimming and then to boys and dancing, good teachers brought her back to poetry and “chance and luck” kept her on track. She read English at Trinity College, Dublin and at Oxford, went to America to do a PhD on Elizabeth Bishop and started going to writing workshops One of these was taught by Seamus Heaney Shapcott was hooked and “poetry won, PhD lost”.

If it hadn’t been for “the intervention of really important teachers”, Jo Shapcott might have ended up not in poetry, but in synchronised swimming. She started writing stories and poems as a child, at a time when “playing with the language” is “almost like Plasticene or mud or clay”. When her focus shifted, first to synchronised swimming and then to boys and dancing, good teachers brought her back to poetry and “chance and luck” kept her on track. She read English at Trinity College, Dublin and at Oxford, went to America to do a PhD on Elizabeth Bishop and started going to writing workshops One of these was taught by Seamus Heaney. Shapcott was hooked and “poetry won, PhD lost”.
As we make our way to a quite corner of the Poetry Caf?n Covent Garden, we are interrupted by a group of young women asking for the “Image Consultants”.

I direct them upstairs, having just bumped into a woman staggering under the weight of an array of sharp, tailored suits. “Is there one for poets?” Shapcott giggles, as we discuss arrangements for the photographer.The truth is she doesn’t need one. Poets, unlike synchronised swimmers, come in all shapes and sizes, but Shapcott, with her long, dark hair drawn back in a ponytail and soulful brown eyes, looks as you imagine a poet should Her clothes are loose and long. She wears a silky scarf, dangly geometric earrings and no make-up. Now in her late forties, she looks 10 years younger.Poetry clearly suits her. That’s just as well, because Jo Shapcott is now one of the country’s leading poets. She has won a number of awards, including the National Poetry Competition, twice, and the Forward Prize for her previous collection, My Life Asleep.