PATTI SMITH - SMITH POETRY SKILLS COME FROM STOLEN BOOK

PATTI SMITH will never forget the book that inspired her to be a punk poet - she stole it from a shop when she was 16. The priestess of punk spied RIMBAUD's ILLUMINATIONS when she was working in a factory, but couldn't afford to buy the book. She recalls, "So the first ever book of poetry I got for myself, I stole. "It was at a bus depot where they had stalls of used books, and a lot of them were dirty books, y'know, weird magazines with naked girls on the cover, but in the middle of all that they had a copy of Rimbaud's Illuminations. However, the HORSES star doesn't feel too guilty - she ended up replacing the book with another poetry smash. She adds, "I don't think it caused the fall of the bus depot's bookshop. Some time later I took a book that I didn't really want and I put it there, so I used the bus depot as my little library. "So I was never sorry that I nicked it."