Waffling about poetry...

I never start a poem with the title - the title usually becomes clear to me in the middle of writing or sometimes only after I've finished the poem. However recently, over a few days, several poem titles popped into my head including what seems to me quite possibly the title of my next collection! So far I've written one of the poems but have yet to have a feel for where the other titles will take me.

I think Tomas Transtromer is most definitely my favourite poet - I just so love his perfect and surprising metaphors and similes, and his ability to bring together the internal and external - the union of the psychological and natural world in the most fluid way. If only he was still around to produce more work. I find his poems spark off new writing for me when I am in the right place to 'hear' the words. His poems encourage me to see things differently, think more creatively. I'm grateful for poets who do that for me.
I've been enjoying Marina Tsvetaeva's poems recently - such a powerful and direct voice - I prefer Elaine Feinstein's translations of her work.

These days I try to write regularly whether the inspiration is there or not just to keep my hand in. I find myself following up and researching great concepts for new work which may and may not lead to anything. But I have to force myself to remember that it is the act of writing itself, exercising the writing muscle, that will in the end lead to something. So I end up with reams of notes and images some of which become useful at some point or another. What I have noticed is that on a rare occasion I achieve an absolute clarity and I am able to turn pages of seemingly disparate notes into several poems. It always surprises me when that happens.

I was delighted to receive my contributor copy of The Caught Habits of Language - an anthology of poems in celebration of W.S. Graham edited by Rachael Boast, Andy Ching and Nathan Hamilton. It is such a beautifully produced book with many great poems inside plus many previously unpublished poems by W.S. Graham. A real privilege to be part of this. The book will be launched at StAnza on Saturday 10th March, but you can pre-order a copy of the book at a discounted price from Donut Press here.


I've been battling over the last couple of months with a poem based on an old Gaelic song - The Jealous Wife - you can hear it sung here - . The song itself originates from a traditional ballad theme based on Child Ballad 10. For some reason I can't get into the heart of the poem yet, so I've had to accept that and sit it aside.

I've written a four-part poem about Freud's couch which was wonderfully fun to write - I watched a short programme about Freud's couch for my course and immediately felt the stirrings of a poem which I repressed because I wanted to work on my ballad. But after a few days the urge to write about Freud's couch overtook me so I gave in and had a ball with it.


I've been moving between reading Brigit Pegeen Kelly and Transtromer, I feel I'm subconsciously inhabiting Kelly's poems - she creates such all enclosed, tangible worlds - they are wonderful places to be.
As I've sat my ballad project aside for now I'm moving between writing and working on smaller nature poems, not sure there is a bigger theme there which bothers me a little. I love nothing more than to be in the middle of a bigger theme that I can really explore and draw out many poems from.

Perhaps I'll find my way back into my ballads through these smaller poems.

I've been reading a lot lately, mixing poetry related books and counselling texts which has made for some interesting crossover thoughts. This week I pulled out of my bookcase the rather large collected letters of Tomas Transtromer and Robert Bly. I bought the book a few years ago hoping that the letters would illuminate Transtromer's writing processes, they didn't. So it sat on the shelf, I being slightly resentful that it took up so much space.

Being more confident in my own writing processes than I was back then I took it off the shelf this time interested in feeding my craving for anything Transtromer. What a wonderful collection of letters. Much of the letters are taken up with translation issues - a fascinating and complex process - and the wonderful relationship between the two poets. What I loved especially was the self-deprecating humour, a true joy to read poets who took their art seriously but most certainly didn't take themselves too seriously. I became fond of Bly throughout the book, whom I've not read in any depth but will get around to.

I've finally 'discovered' the work of Brigit Pegeen Kelly, how did it take me so long? I'm floating through her collection The Orchard at the moment.

I'm officially addicted to writing sequences - I just can't seem to help it!
Autumn has always been a good writing time for me and autumnal poems have been spilling out of me over the last few weeks. So I guess I'm back to writing shorter, imagistic (but in sequences!) poems for now.

I've made Tomas Transtromer my current mentor poet - trying to work out how he comes up with those absolutely perfect metaphors, and how the inner and outer worlds come together so fluidly in his poems.

Transtromer was a psychologist and I've always been drawn to his dream-like poems, I occasionally use dream images / events in my own poems and have started recording a dream diary again. I particularly like how he zones in on the narrator's experience of the here and now - the eternal present. I'm doing a counselling skills course at the moment and it's challenging me very much to think about my feelings in the present - and of course this is all seeping into my poems.

I have a few poems out in submission, it feels good to have a growing number available - though I'm impatient to hear back!

I've been on a roll of garden poems for a while now, in fact I think my garden has taken on a bizarre life and mythology of its own which I'm happy to tap into for as long as the poems last!

I've been knee-deep in reading some wonderful books recently. I had a buying splurge and bought a bunch of books I've been dying to read for ages:
Airmail: The letters of Robert Bly and Tomas Transtromer, Fauverie and Heart of a Deer by Pascale Petit, and the excitingly amazing African Folktales and Sculpture by Paul Radin.

Any Plath fan will recognise the Radin book which according to Ted Hughes had a huge influence on the poems Plath wrote at Yaddo. I've been wanting to pick up a copy of the book for ages and managed to get a second-hand ex-library copy. The book is huge and full of wonderful stories and large photos. It was exciting to come across The City Where Men Are Mended - a Hausa folktale, and see how Plath weaved the African mythology into her own personal mythology in her Poem for a Birthday.

I read Airmail very quickly, it wasn't quite as good as I was hoping it would be. Very much a friendship played out in letters and particularly good if you're interested in translation but otherwise I didn't find it to be particularly revelatory about either Bly or Transtromer's poetry.

It's so good to have Pascale Petit's new collection (with an absolutely gorgeous cover) and catch up with one of her older collections. I'm happily reading them slowly and continually and probably will be for the next while. Still also reading Roethke and Bhatt - which have become my staple reading and I don't see that changing for the foreseeable future.