2 January 1966

My dear Zeke

Very pleased to get yours – obliquely – today: hope you will have got mine by now. I wrote, quite without knowing that you were also trying to contact me. And I hope you have had a chat with a friend from Farfield who might be interested in me.

So you will be leaving Chemchemi to lecture at varsity. Very nice, but I hope that this will only mean an extension of your work in fostering creative interests. It may have one advantage; that the students will be bound to certain specific tasks, whatever their own interests may be: one needs this direction, I think, especially since there are many who peter out as artists because they do not come to terms with the fact that creative work is HARD WORK.

I liked your own bit of verse very much: do you do much verse now? Some think that verse is for the young, but – after having shared this idea to some extent, I begin to think that it can, as well, be a very satisfying pursuit for the mature! But perhaps I'm just biased in favour of myself as I begin to age. But I should be glad to see more of your work – my range of contacts is severely circumscribed, as I am sure you are aware.

You will also know – if my letter got through to you, that I am now thinking very seriously of pulling up roots, and am beginning to look around at pastures. It is for this reason that I wrote for some advice from you, and that I hope you spoke to the man from Farfield.

I know you will be glad to know that despite the grinding mechanicalness of my present existence – apart from the hours I am confined to my home, I spend my time in an engineering factory. I have managed to do a bit of writing. The thing I include is one of the very newest, and one that pleases me quite a lot, at present, at any rate. I like its procession – a kind of organic growth, which is, fortunately, quite natural, even if it seems to be carefully calculated.