John Freeman: How I Wrote ‘Staircase with Handbag’
“The very act of writing a poem implies that one hopes it will be found valuable, helpful even, by a reader or readers”
Category: Interviews
Caitlin Tina Jones: How I Wrote ‘In two hundred years we live in a cleft of Bannau Brycheiniog National Park’
“I think that titles are best used when they tell us something about the poem – specifically, something that you may be otherwise unable to say within the body”
David Lloyd: How I Wrote ‘Devil on Wheels’
“I hope that along with evoking an artist’s sensibility and intellect at a young age, my poem also conveys [Richard] Burton’s powerful forward motion in life”
Yuan Changming: How I Wrote ‘East vs West: A Synoptic Cultural Comparison’
“As I see it, the form of a poem is always an integral part of its content”
Hassan A. Usman: How I Wrote ‘Displacement Ghazal’
“I have always seen poetry as a form of resistance and an (urgent) response to every part of our daily lives”
Eve Elizabeth Moriarty: How I Wrote ‘Card Trick’
“Sometimes if I’m being flippant I say basically my entire writing career is based on pointing out that some stuff is a bit like other stuff”
Laurie Bolger: How I Wrote ‘Bants’
“[There] were scaffolders banging outside our window ‘talking loud’ shouting and swearing… I wrote this poem in my phone notes app whilst we listened to them and made ourselves a tea”
Josh Smyth: How I Wrote ‘Billboard’
“During these visits, I am immersed in familiar company, and it isn’t until I have short moments away from family, in solitude, when I take stock of my surroundings and focus on the unfamiliarity of everything”
Deborah Finding: How I Wrote ‘valley burn’
“I’m always thinking about who gets to speak and be listened to, and who gets silenced”