“Alchemy, metamorphosis, seems to be at the heart – a moment when the language of the poem leaps beyond all the mechanics of effort I put in.”
Category: Interviews
Kathy Miles: How I write a poem
“If you’re a poet, I don’t think there’s ever a time when you’re not writing.” In his poem ‘Night Fishing’,  Glyn Edwards likens the writing process to wrestling with a pike thrashing in his throat in the middle of the night, which he’d haul ‘from my head in waking gloom / and wrap its snarl…
Susie Wild: How I write a poem
I RUN baths like I write poems.Draw the hot water first,soak the blank white. Leave it sit for a while often too long’til it soups cold. Or I’ll run it steaming full,let out the excess to avoid floods,that unwanted heat bit by bit, top up with the C tap. Submerge ’til skin turns pink, sweat forms on my brow,…
Gareth Writer-Davies: How I write a poem
“I wasn’t prepared for all the time that writing involves […] and the obsession that has risen within me. But I think it was what I was made to do.” I’m often identified as a Welsh poet (something which I’m always slow to contradict) but as usual, the truth is more complicated than that. With…
Rob Miles: How I write a poem
There is no muse, but there is fertile mush. Everyone bar no one is at least a first stage poet, that is, someone who ‘hears’ things: other’s words; or their own, internally;
Matthew Haigh: How I write a poem
I would say that humour and gorgeousness are key ingredients to many of my poems – there’s a kind of paradise in daydreaming
WBOTY 2020 Shortlist Poets: Interview with Deryn Rees-Jones
Editor Jonathan Edwards interviews former guest editor of Poetry Wales Deryn Rees-Jones whose collection Erato (Seren, 2019) is shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2020. JE: Huge congratulations on being shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year. How does it feel to be shortlisted? Is it especially important to you to be recognised…
WBOTY 2020 Shortlist Poets: Interview with Zoë Skoulding
Editor Jonathan Edwards interviews Zoë Skoulding, former Poetry Wales editor and shortlisted poet in Literature Wales’ Wales Book of the Year 2020.
WBOTY 2020 Shortlist Poets: Interview with Jeremy Over
Editor Jonathan Edwards interviews Jeremy Over, shortlisted poet for Wales Book of the Year 2020.