We are delighted to announce the shortlist for Wales Poetry Award 2022, sponsored by Literature Wales and judged by Gwyneth Lewis Scroll down to learn more about our thirteen shortlisted poets, read their poems, and don’t forget to register for your free ticket (at the bottom of the page) to join us at our online…
Category: Poems
Mark Doty: How I Wrote ‘Deep Lane [June 23rd, evening of the first fireflies]’
“I have always felt that risk could energise a poem and that the reader might feel the heat being generated”
Saddiq Dzukogi: How I Wrote ‘The Old Ones’
“[This] poem represents the beginning of a willingness to engage in this new awe of the self through the prism of ancestry. It is an act of seeking permission to pursue this new wonder.”
Hannah Linden: How I Wrote ‘Each Morning, New Leaves’
“My poet mind is far wiser than I am. It takes me awhile to catch up with it.”
Jeff William Acosta: How I Wrote ‘of thee I sing’
“They came in like flashes, in fragments—a tapestry of thoughts. Writing poetry in a language that is not native to me, in a sense makes me think of ways or approach the English language in a different angle.”
Paul Deaton: How I Wrote ‘Harvest’
“I find that some poems I write, luckily, just seem to happen – I might get a first line, like a fish biting, and then, if I have time, I let the poem unfold itself, and see where that line takes me”
Aaron Kent: How I Wrote ‘Between all of us like a Wavy Halo Form’
“After the brain haemorrhage I was put on very heavy sleeping tablets, and when they kicked in I began to write poetry, then I’d wake and find streams of subconscious thoughts, odd typos, and nonsense words which I’d later edit into a poem while conscious.”
D.A. Prince: How I Wrote ‘3.00 a.m.’
“I hoped that if the reader could feel what that walk was physically like, they would bring their own memories into the poem”
Adam Cairns: How I Wrote ‘Mum Dancing’
“The sonnet seems like a safe room to me. It has known dimensions, the four walls of its rhymes and the turn.”