“I like how words can fall on the page of a poem, how words look when they are put in funny and wrong places. I like not having the pressure of capital letters and full stops. It feels a bit naughty, a bit cheeky. And I like being cheeky.” I keep saying, whenever I’m asked…
Tag: how she writes a poem
Iris Colomb on how she writes a poem
“I eventually chose to respond to an anecdote he told about his five-year-old daughter walking off in a park. Instead of telling her to come back he started following her, wondering what she was thinking about. This went on for about an hour, during which she never looked back, and when she finally did, it…
From the Archive: Sophie McKeand on How She Writes a Poem
‘As the years roll by I feel I am no longer waiting at a dried-up riverside, instead I’m slowly metamorphosing into the river, and that is as much as I can hope for.’ Since discovering the mental landscape existed over a decade ago I’ve realised how important it is to cultivate this space when creating….
From the Archive: Frances Presley on How She Writes a Poem
‘See if the draft poem has thematic and technical substance or throw it away. Subject it to all the tests you can think of.’ In September’s instalment of ‘How to write a poem’ Frances Presley shares her lovely and instructive wisdom for approaching a poem: 1. Write a sequence of poems with a theme and…
From the Archive: Ailbhe Darcy on How She Writes a Poem
We kick off 2018 with the marvellous poet, Ailbhe Darcy, on how she writes a poem: First, invest monstrously in your own personal mythology. Novelists build a fictional world for the space of a volume or several volumes, but the poet builds a fictional world across an entire life. Then, disagree. A poem is a disagreement….