Bob Dylan's relative casual attitude to winning the Nobel Prize for Literature is already a little infamous in academic and artistic circles.

The legendary musician went MIA on the Nobel Prize panel after his win, finally then responding to say he was left "speechless" by the award, which hails him as "having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition".

An honour Smith certainly didn't take lightly; the musician notably stumbling over her words but quickly, and graciously, apologising for the minor slip-up. "I’m sorry. Could we start that section, I apologise. Sorry, I’m so nervous," she said, prompting a round of applause from the crowd.

The "godmother of punk" has now taken to the New Yorker to write a candid essay on her experience, and to clarify that she didn't forget the words, but was merely overwhelmed by the scale and significance of the occasion.

She writes that she has loved 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall' since she was a teenager; rehearsing it so obsessively in the run-up to the ceremony that the words "were now a part of me", but that she was "simply unable to draw them out". On the morning of the ceremony, "I thought of my mother, who bought me my first Dylan album when I was barely sixteen."

Bob Dylan wins Nobel Prize for Literature

"It occurred to me then that, although I did not live in the time of Arthur Rimbaud, I existed in the time of Bob Dylan," she concludes. "I also thought of my husband and remembered performing the song together, picturing his hands forming the chords." She reiterates that she was given a warm welcome at the ceremony, saying that the experience made her "come to terms with the truer nature of my duty".