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”
Author: Frances Turpin
Frances is Poetry Wales' Magazine Manager
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'”
Bank Holiday Sale
This Easter weekend, get 10% off all non-sale items, including print and digital subscriptions, using code MARCH24
Katie Munnik: How I Wrote ‘The Invention of Rope’
“You might say that writing this poem was an act of unwinding”
Writing Advice from Cheltenham Poetry Festival
Iris Anne Lewis, Taz Rahman, Carrie Etter and Matthew Hollis share their favourite writing tips