“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…
Category: Interviews
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.
Natalie Ann Holborow: How I write a poem
When I take my place in front of my laptop at four in the morning (disgusting hour of the day if it’s for work, yet a sublime hour for languishing in that haze of soporific half-dreaming), I rarely arrive with a solid plan.
Briony Collins and the poems that inspire her
I was very lucky growing up, but not in the way you might imagine. My mother died when I was five and the precise circumstances of her death are still a mystery. When my father wasn’t drowning his grief, he was masking it in anger. My brother and I were emotionally stunted for a long…
Peter Knaggs on the poems that inspire him
Vasko I’ve got it in my hand now, the hefty slab of it, Vasko Popa Complete Poems and I thought I’d have a go at saying summat about it. Now, I love Popa and over the last year he has been the biggest influence over my work. At a fundamental level Popa has altered my…