Oxford University Press - Gazing at Stars

Got an email from Christine Lindop, a freelance editor with Oxford University Press. She is working on a new book - a collection of short stories specially edited for readers for whom English is a foreign language.

This is part of a series entitled Bookworms World Stories, which showcase the work of writers in English from different parts of the world. Christine's volume is scheduled for publication in 2011 and will consist of stories from Asia.

I'm known for my poetry rather than for my short stories, but Oxford University Press told me that they would like to use one of my poems, entitled Accident, in the preliminary pages of their book. That's because my poem has inspired the title of their book, Gazing at Stars.

I said ok. This is the poem:

Accident

And I,
gazing at stars,
stumbled over you,
tripped
and
fell painfully in love,
couldn't get up
for ages.

Okay, the actual poem doesn't really look like that. The lines are arranged and spaced in a certain way, to suggest serendipitious wanderings and a sudden fall. But Blogger doesn't seem to give me any option to replicate the line arrangements - it automatically aligns all the lines for me.