“I love how agile and stripped back it is as a form. It doesn’t allow you to dwell, chewing away unnecessary information and only leaving the reader with the heart of the idea”
Content warning: mentions/implications of domestic or intimate partner abuse
Poetry Wales Editor Zoë Brigley reflects on our Summer 2023 issue
“The poem is an attempt to look back as well as forward, to acknowledge the creativity of women past, present and future”
“It is in the editing-amending-polishing phases of the original thought-story-memory that I listen to the rhythms of the language, to the unfolding of the scenes, if more than one, and sense when there is what I think of as a key change, almost as though it is music”
“The more men that can look inside themselves and be comfortable with this the better. It enables us to be better humans, to take better care, both of ourselves and others”
“I like to gather together all manner of things to see me through the making of a poem… I don’t know what to expect so I take everything, just in case.”
“I’ve always been an issue based writer and one who draws from personal experience, but just ranting doesn’t cut it”
“A lot of my images and phrases are the result of letting my subconscious lead the way and just go with it”
“My experience as a sculptor at art school makes me wary of trying to create something that is self-consciously an artifact… For me it is the subject and material of the poem that drives its shape”
