Wednesday 4 September 2019

Natasha Sanders-Kay : part two

What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?

Letting go of the urge to control everything, capture everything, include everything. When I’m writing a poem I need to remind myself it’s not an essay.

I’m also learning to write the difficult personal stuff I often don’t want to write or think about or share, which is sometimes the most compelling material. I’m finding it’s gut-wrenching to write through anxiety and fragmentation and fear, but so far it’s worth it so long as I protect myself and remember to breathe.

Worrying about offending people is always difficult, too. In life and in writing, I’m trying to break my tendency to explain, because in poems there’s little room for explanation. So I need to detach from my instinct to clutter the text with context.

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