Fleur Adcock wonders if handwriting mirrors character. The fact that the next poem in her new collection, Hoard (Bloodaxe Books, £9.95), is called Six Typewriters suggests her own solution to the question.   

      HER USUAL HAND

My signature begins with a shape

I never use elsewhere: a relic

of the initial ‘F’ I was taught

in ‘real writing’ at my seventh school.

~

My writing became, if anything,

less real as further schools numbed it,

and the sprinting pace of lecture notes

crushed it into a kind of shorthand.

~

In my first library job, my boss

thrust a manual on penmanship

at me: the overdue cards I sent

brought shame on the University.

~

For all the charms of the special nib

and its trellis patterns on the page,

Italic script was not the answer;

it was not writing; it was drawing.

~

So my friends couldn’t read my letters?

Very well, I would learn to type them.

My private messages to myself

could remain in their workaday rags.

~

If handwriting mirrors character

all I can see mine reflecting is

my headlong scramble for the exit,

shouting something over my shoulder.