What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?
What I find difficult is being intentional about the poems I write. I have never been terribly successful in sitting down to write ‘about’ any situation or topic. It’s as though I need to trick my subconscious into letting things out. That’s why I find the timed writing we do in our poetry group so valuable. A prompt or a phrase from a poem may take me to some incident in my life that I’ve never thought to write about, or I may go to pure play with images or sound. And I’ve surprised myself by writing around or about a character, some kind of incantatory everywoman, whose experiences are very different from my own. As process, that can be effective. However, I have a handful of ideas that I’d very much like to put into poems and I’ve been frustrated that my efforts so far have felt forced or stilted. The other thing I find hard is to actually get around to writing poetry; I can be like a squirmy kid in a classroom desk, allowing myself to be distracted by all manner of other compelling activities.
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