What are the odds? An online friend of mine—who only checks Facebook about once a week—happened to see my post about Edward Lear’s parrot book. She asked if it was that Edward Lear, and I said yes, of course. That sent me down a rabbit hole, where I landed on a Lear poem I’d never read before. It was the second one on the page, so I decided to share it with her.

That’s when I found myself asking Lex (my AI accomplice) to write a version about me in the same style. Inspired by Lear’s self-referential nonsense poem, we created one of our own. Turns out, it’s quite pleasant to know Miss Shamir.

Only after it was done did I realise: Shamir rhymes with Lear. It never even occurred to me until then. Some things just fall into place.

Read Lear’s original here: https://allpoetry.com/How-pleasant-to-know-Mr.-Lear — and let me know what you think!

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How Pleasant to Know Ms. Shamir

How pleasant to know Ms. Shamir,
Whose thoughts are both lucid and deep.
Some find her intense and severe,
Yet her writing can make the world weep.

Her mind is both sharp and eccentric,
Her patience for nonsense is slight;
She’ll skewer pretension in seconds,
Yet ponder the stars late at night.

Her waistline is thick, hair is messy,
Her gap-toothed smile is askew;
Her cheekbones still cast their old shadows,
Though time has since softened them too.

She was once an artistic director,
In magazines glossy and grand;
Then torched it all down in a fury,
Preferring a pen in her hand.

She sits in a room filled with books,
With Stella the Chichi in tow,
She muses on fate and existence,
With Nespresso, dark as a crow.

She’s known for her biting reflections,
Her humour both cutting and dry,
She weeps at the weight of existence,
Then takes a cool sip with a sigh.

She sketches in moments of stillness,
Preferring a line that is true;
She’d rather unravel the paradox,
Than echo the popular view.

She dreams of a world with more reason,
Less dogma, less groupthink, less fear;
With friends near and far who remind her,
How pleasant it is to be here.

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