“I began to write poems and music in earnest to save my life”
Category: Interviews
Astra Papachristodoulou: How I Wrote ‘Unbodied’
“Given [the constraint of short form], I like to utilise materials that, in conjunction with the short text, offer additional meaning to ultimately make the poems multi-layered, esoteric and more nuanced”
Daljit Nagra: How I Wrote ‘We’re Lighting Up The Nation’
“I didn’t want to be a poet who knocks out book after book of ‘auto-pilot’ poems, so I stopped writing the thirty-line poem and sought something that would challenge me. I waited to be astonished by something different.”
How I Write a Poem: Best Writing Tips of 2023
A look back at some of the best writing tips from our How I Write a Poem interviews in 2023. Share your favourites with us!
Anna Blasiak: How I Wrote ‘EMBROIDERY. HAFT’
“[I]nstead of having two separate language versions of the poem, I ended up with one, which brings the languages together… This, I think, reflects how the brain of a bilingual/multilingual person works”
Muskaan Razdan: How I Wrote ‘Duplex’
“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
Rachel Carney: How I Wrote ‘Unremarkable’
“The poem is an attempt to look back as well as forward, to acknowledge the creativity of women past, present and future”
Anthony Wade: How I Wrote ‘A Lost Voice’
“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”
Stuart McPherson: How I Wrote ‘In Time I’ll Fade Away’
“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”