“Writing long-hand in a notebook feels like a safe space, if only because I’m usually the only person who can read my messy handwriting!”
Content warning: mentions of drowning, death of a child
Tag: how to write a poem
Ìfẹ́olúwa Àyàndélé: How I Wrote ‘The Dreams of Grandfather and Me’
“The answer I got was the dream. That dream, a cherished ambition, becomes a kind of symbiosis connection between my grandfather and me.”
J.S. Dorothy: How I Wrote ‘Double-Empathy Problem’
“It’s therefore frustration that compelled me to write this poem, and a desire to illuminate how deeply compassion can be felt even when it’s not always immediately apparent”
Jane Houston: How I Wrote ‘Ponies’
“The poem is about a human experience of illness, due to a virus in the human body. But the illness itself takes a human form, and our abuse of shared ground gives the poem its monochrome palette.”
Mason Lloyd: How I Wrote ‘Is this ok?’
“[No] matter how many words I put down, it didn’t touch on what I was trying to get to. Instead, what I have tried to do is not say it, but use the space in-between, the felt space, and use that as a vehicle to get me, and hopefully the reader, closer to something.”
Maggie Harris: How I Wrote ‘Legacy’
“I was attempting to write song lyrics before I realised it was poetry I was writing”
Hilary Menos: How I Wrote ‘Lonely Hearts’
“Space is, of course, the “final frontier” but there are other areas for exploration, such as the deep ocean, and the human mind.”
Euron Griffith: How I Wrote ‘History’
“For me, inspiration for poems tends to arrive when you least expect it and I find that my mind is particularly receptive to ideas when it’s in ‘neutral’ or ‘resting’ mode. Which is why this one came to me while I was queueing up to be served in Ashton’s Fish stall at Cardiff Market one Saturday afternoon”
John Freeman: How I Wrote ‘Staircase with Handbag’
“The very act of writing a poem implies that one hopes it will be found valuable, helpful even, by a reader or readers”