“I hurry the final stretch to get the poem on paper. Repeating it over and over, scared I will forget.”
Category: How I Write a Poem
Matthew Francis on how he writes a poem
“I had a sudden fantasy that the man and the bookshop only existed on Tuesday afternoons, that place and time had merged into one, and everyone else I passed on that brief walk to the leisure centre seemed to me part of that imaginary Tuesday world.”
Owen Lewis on how he writes a poem
“I see and hear things at this hour that might be lost later in the day when texts and emails and schedules and all the to-do’s crowd in.”
Virna Teixeira on how she writes a poem
“It is a kind of temporary obsession”
Azad Ashim Sharma on how he writes a poem
“I have to come to terms with how the very act of writing poetry for me must both resist and succumb to a racialised assemblage.”
Simon Mundy on how he writes a poem
Slowly, in starts and fits, Words resistant, fighting each other Not to come out, who must go first Into that opening line of fire. Who should lead the second paragraph, Demand a full stop. Now, Before the meaning becomes serious, The commission fulfilled. Why not go for coffee instead, Phone a friend, drive me to…
Dai George on how he writes a poem
“[W}e’re long past the point where a straight white male poet can be swaggering or ‘unreliable’ with impunity”
Prue Chamberlayne on how she writes a poem
“Write freely and richly, notice the rhythm and the images that float around it, and walk with these first beginnings, since pace helps the poem to find itself and its own way.”
Stephen Emmerson on how they write a poem
“There have been times when I’ve invested months of effort into a project only to realise that it doesn’t work. That’s just how it goes. If you take risks, you can’t expect things to work out all the time.”