A game of Spot the Poem
A game of Spot The Poem.
At the Latitude Festival poetry tent this year, Daljit Nagra conducted a poetry quiz. One of the questions was: guess the name of the poet from this cryptic clue - ’soon’. The answer is ‘anon’. Maybe the way I use my notebook follows a similar logic; I don’t sit under oak trees and compose. Composing is a horrible uphill struggle which involves fighting bears. But the whimsical, fanciful side of poetry - the bit which is about momentary images or fleeting ideas - is easily indulged in if you just stick random bits of paper to the page. And that, dear reader, is what I tend to do. I think it is just as important to collect details as it is to write drafts. The two images above show newspaper clippings, comic strips, fliers - nothing particularly important or impressive - but in a few weeks’ time I might flick back and think ‘Ha. A poem about reading a disappointing literary journal… where could that go…’ And however poor it sounds it works! I read a poem called F12 at Latitude and explained where the poem came from - it came from me following someone around, writing about it (in a different notebook I no longer have), then returning to the idea a year or two later. If I remember rightly I was in Paris and had a few shaky photos and a line or two about whether the subject turned left or right at the Bastille…
