How does a poem begin?
For me, I’ve found that it’s usually a single word or an image that I begin a poem with. It gets me past the blank page and then I wait to get lost in the flow. Usually I don’t know where my poem is going at all until I really dive into that original word or image that has sprung into my head.
Sometimes a poem begins with a word like “tongue,” and then I attach a seemingly incongruous word to it: “rusty tongue.” Other times I look at the dirty dishes in my sink and think there’s definitely a poem there.
Sometimes that first idea becomes a focal point, a fulcrum that the rest of the piece centres around, other times I ditch the concept entirely by the end of the poem. Most of the time, it’s just a little background noise to get me to the last line.
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