How does a poem begin?
Poems begin in my daydreams, watching the play of light on the leaf of a plant or my daughter collecting shells on the beach. The image sticks and sparks a word or phrase that rattles about in my head. A pure annoyance until I write it down. When I start to write, the rest of the poem pours out, heads off in all directions like a spilt basket of blackcurrants. I let it spill on the page, then leave it a few weeks to tackle later and see where it wanted to go in the first place. Often, what looks like one poem is actually three.
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