“Sometimes if I’m being flippant I say basically my entire writing career is based on pointing out that some stuff is a bit like other stuff”
Author: Frances Turpin
Frances is Poetry Wales' Magazine Manager
Laurie Bolger: How I Wrote ‘Bants’
“[There] were scaffolders banging outside our window ‘talking loud’ shouting and swearing… I wrote this poem in my phone notes app whilst we listened to them and made ourselves a tea”
The True Story of a Sable Maid’s Appearance in the 18th Century
A poem by Jenny Mitchell, in solidarity with actress Francesca Amewudah-Rivers
Josh Smyth: How I Wrote ‘Billboard’
“During these visits, I am immersed in familiar company, and it isn’t until I have short moments away from family, in solitude, when I take stock of my surroundings and focus on the unfamiliarity of everything”
Deborah Finding: How I Wrote ‘valley burn’
“I’m always thinking about who gets to speak and be listened to, and who gets silenced”
Lynne Hjelmgaard: How I Became a Poet
“When I attempted to put my feelings on paper it became clear that it would be a long, slow process with hard work and determination at its core”
Stuart Pickford: How I Wrote ‘Backchat’
“If you let your characters speak, you can give them enough rope to hang themselves: they reveal their own nature without the narrator having to comment; you’re showing and not telling”
Postscript for Alun Lewis
Why is it that some poets are more ‘discoverable’ than others?
Jefferson Holdridge: How I Wrote ‘Hands’
“She noticed my predilection for rhyme and then warned that using it should sound ‘blindingly inevitable'”