“When I’m writing, I tend to hold closely to the rhythm of the poem as it’s unfolding, line by line and breath by breath.”
Category: Interviews
Oisín Breen: How I Wrote ‘Even Small Birds Can Render Planets unto Ash’
“I’d definitely consider writing poetry to be more a sculptor at the rock-face, at least at times, with a dash of the composer listening for the motifs, the rises and falls, and the music”
Fred Johnston: How I Wrote ‘Interview’
“For me, a poem must have a certain lyric sense, not in a fascistic way, but the song must be somewhere within it”
Taylor Strickland: How I Wrote ‘Coille Challtainn’
“If I have an economy of language, it’s the result of twelve years of sleeves-rolled up, punishing labour… when I was younger, the poetry wrote itself. Now I’m lucky if I can write a poem at all!”
Guinevere Clark: How I Wrote ‘St Non’
“My work has an absorption in the baby or child, reaching into their sensual, physical and emotional world through imagery, speech and metaphor”
Penelope Shuttle: How I Wrote ‘More’
“[As] poets we track and witness what is happening all around the world as pollution and extinction becomes not a prediction for the future, but the very place we live in”
Alan Zhukovski: How I Wrote ‘THE REVOLUTION OF THE BROOKS’
“A poem can grow from a photograph (or several) like a crystal”
Gabriele Tinti: How I Wrote ‘Confessions’
“Every single word, every one of my lines, arises out of the quest for immortality, to conquer death”
Vanessa Napolitano: How I Wrote ‘The list’
“I often find when I write that there is a syllabic pattern emerging and it forms the basis for how I structure my poetry. It’s rarely deliberate in the first instance… but gives me a foundation to build the poem on.”