Thanks to The New York Observer, above is a photo of the aforementioned Nick Laird and Zadie Smith (or Lady Z, as Laird calls her in the dedication in his first book of poems To a Fault.
Lady Z is the glamorous (and only) woman in the middle, and her "dear Laird" (as she deems him in her dedication in the novel On Beauty) is to the right of her, the adorable one in the skinny tie.
Smith does more than just dedicate her book to her husband. She uses three of his poems in it. In fact, the title of her third novel is the name of the poem "On Beauty." In the novel, a modern day adaptation of E.M. Forster's Howard's End, Smith uses Laird's poem as one written by a main female character, Claire Malcolm. It serves as an example of a broken pantoum Claire, a professor, is going to give to her poetry class.
In the author's note, Smith thanks Laird "for allowing the last poem to be Claire's" and it is as simple as that.
No, we could not itemize the list of sins they can't forgive us.
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