“Poetry doesn’t only have to exist as words on a page in a standard house font. We read them out loud, we listen to others, we watch them be performed… This poem is about noisy overlapping messages, it’s about everything being too much”
Author: Frances Turpin
Frances is Poetry Wales' Magazine Manager
Ciarán O’Rourke: How I Wrote ‘Blackthorn’
“When I’m writing, I tend to hold closely to the rhythm of the poem as it’s unfolding, line by line and breath by breath.”
Oisín Breen: How I Wrote ‘Even Small Birds Can Render Planets unto Ash’
“I’d definitely consider writing poetry to be more a sculptor at the rock-face, at least at times, with a dash of the composer listening for the motifs, the rises and falls, and the music”
Fred Johnston: How I Wrote ‘Interview’
“For me, a poem must have a certain lyric sense, not in a fascistic way, but the song must be somewhere within it”
Taylor Strickland: How I Wrote ‘Coille Challtainn’
“If I have an economy of language, it’s the result of twelve years of sleeves-rolled up, punishing labour… when I was younger, the poetry wrote itself. Now I’m lucky if I can write a poem at all!”
Guinevere Clark: How I Wrote ‘St Non’
“My work has an absorption in the baby or child, reaching into their sensual, physical and emotional world through imagery, speech and metaphor”
Penelope Shuttle: How I Wrote ‘More’
“[As] poets we track and witness what is happening all around the world as pollution and extinction becomes not a prediction for the future, but the very place we live in”
Alan Zhukovski: How I Wrote ‘THE REVOLUTION OF THE BROOKS’
“A poem can grow from a photograph (or several) like a crystal”
Gabriele Tinti: How I Wrote ‘Confessions’
“Every single word, every one of my lines, arises out of the quest for immortality, to conquer death”