Michelle Penn : part one

Michelle Penn’s debut pamphlet, Self-portrait as a diviner, failing (2018), won the Paper Swans Prize (UK). Recent poetry has appeared in The Rialto, Perverse, MIR Online, B O D Y and Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal. New work is forthcoming in The London Magazine, The Interpreter’s House, PN Review and Stand. Michelle plans innovative poetry/art/music events in London as part of Corrupted Poetry. michellepennwriter.com

Photo credit: Andy Tobin

How does your work first enter the world? Do you have a social group or writers group that you work ideas and poems with?

I share poems with a few small groups of poets. We know one another’s work well and have honest discussions about a poem’s strengths and weaknesses. (We also laugh a lot.) I tend to show a poem to at least one of these groups before revising it (and revising again and again and again…).