For me, the persona poem was the gateway drug into writing a more mature form of poetry. It offered a distancing mechanism – the ability to project the personal onto the classical. Poets like Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath were hugely influential. And then there’s Louise Glück. Her sequence-length lyric, Meadowlands, which depicts her failed…
Jan Harris on the poems that inspire her
Growing up in the countryside, I suppose it was natural for me to be drawn to nature poetry. The first poetry book I owned was Ted Hughes’ Selected Poems. I still have most of it; the back cover is missing and many of the pages have been punctured or torn by canine teeth – of the…
Mari Ellis Dunning on the poems that inspire her
“There is a real magic(k) in finding a beautiful line or unique turn of phrase that jolts you as a reader, and sits in your gut far beyond that initial reading”
Leo Temple on the poems that inspire him
“‘A Lot of People Bathing in a Stream,’ by Wallace Stevens, has, for some time, been the poem I return to when I have truly lost my way.”
‘Vertebrae’, ‘On Watching a Lemon Sail the Sea’ and ‘My Body Can House Two Hearts’ reviewed by Kathy Miles (Poetry Wales 55.3)
Kathy Miles reviews collections from Glyn Edwards, Maggie Harris and Hanan Issa.
5 tips for new writers from underrepresented backgrounds
Are you a new writer looking to publish your poems? Here are 5 tips to become a published poet.
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Chloe Garner on how she writes a poem
“I hurry the final stretch to get the poem on paper. Repeating it over and over, scared I will forget.”
Matthew Francis on how he writes a poem
“I had a sudden fantasy that the man and the bookshop only existed on Tuesday afternoons, that place and time had merged into one, and everyone else I passed on that brief walk to the leisure centre seemed to me part of that imaginary Tuesday world.”