You Will Be Hearing From Us Shortly
You feel adequate to the demands of this position?
What qualities do you feel you
Personally have to offer?
Ah.
Let us consider your application form.
Your qualifications, though impressive, are
Not, we must admit, precisely what
We had in mind. Would you care
To defend their relevance?
Indeed.
Now your age. Perhaps you feel able
To make your own comment about that,
Too? We are conscious ourselves
Of the need for a candidate with precisely
The right degree of immaturity.
So glad we agree.
And now a delicate matter: your looks.
You do appreciate this work involves
Contact with the actual public? Might they,
Perhaps, find your appearance
Disturbing?
Quite so.
And your accent. That is the way
You have always spoken, is it? What
Of your education? We mean, of course,
Where were you educated?
And how
Much of a handicap is that to you,
Would you say?
Married, children,
We see. The usual dubious
Desire to perpetuate what had better
Not have happened at all. We do not
Ask what domestic desires shimmer
Behind that vaguely unsuitable address.
And you were born--?
Yes. Pity.
So glad we agree.
Commentary
As part of his theme “Poems at Work”
Nothing much to add on this, except it made me laugh out loud when I read it in the Oxford Book of Work. I love the image it conjures up of a malign interviewer peering down in disgust at the unfortunate interviewee. I’ve been there too…
— Vikram
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From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
The Happy Reaper · 5 June 2003
I have troubles with the voice in this one. I feel that the hyperbole applied to the dialogue (which, quite apart from being ‘everything’ in prose, is literally everything here) goes too far, and renders the narrator implausibly harsh and pompous. There is also, as with many of Fanthorpe’s weaker poems (in my opinion, the vast majority), a barely controlled sense of indignance on the part of the poem, which feels sufficiently contrived to render it mildly embarressing.
Peter Carter
Elizabeth Cooper · 9 June 2004
It is not the poet simply trying to depict a cruel dickensian employer- he is judging himself; society- questioning how we judge ourselves and each other!
Abi green · 22 February 2007
hi, you don’t know me but i feel the comment you left for the poem ‘you will be hearing from us shortly’ was very to the point, you also tweeking on the fact that U.A.Fanthorpe is trying to convey a very significant message accross. i do not feel this is a weak poem at all, and the comment left justified this. thankyou.