Everyone says that you must keep a notebook. This is for jotting down ideas, odd rhymes, snippets of stuff you hear on the tube, newspaper cuttings – in short anything and everything that might be turned into a poem at some point.
I have been writing poetry for almost two years and now have two big fat notebooks stuffed with lists and half-finished stanzas and a sestina that won’t work out no matter what I try. Rereading these at intervals not only provides inspiration, but a sense of progress. However, there is one page that troubles me. Squashed into the bottom right hand corner is a jumble of words written in green ink: pith, peony, pot, polite, permanent, pushy. I have no idea what I was thinking nor how this list could be turned into any sort of poetry. Perhaps I could start a competition…
