How does a poem begin?
For me, it’s usually some unusual, arresting image that provides the spark. For instance, the origin of a poem from my book, Grenade Genie, called The Evil Eye – that’s about how controlling social media is – can be traced back to when I saw a cobweb stretched across the amber signal of a traffic light (a cobweb that could only actually be seen, complete with captured insects, when the amber light was momentarily lit).
On seeing that, I was inspired to write the following section, which employs the word ‘amber’ twice, in one sense representing something fleeting and in the other representing something that preserves – to illustrate how social media gives the impression that our lives will be preserved forever but, instead, is simply creating an illusion which is actually a very sophisticated trap:
You’ve made a pact with the digital devil,
not even to be an insect preserved in amber,
but simply an insect that’s landed on a cobweb
stretched out directly in front of an amber signal
and as soon as you’re lit up, no-one hangs around.
You’ve allowed yourself to get caught in a cobweb
spun by a social spider that sucks you dry of information,
then leaves your hollowed-out exoskeletal frame
to rot on its website.
Anyway, like a lot of the initial sparks that begin my poems, that section ended up in the middle of the finished piece. But that’s the thing: once I’ve got that first bit written down, I’m usually on my way, and wherever it ends up getting placed, will very soon have a finished poem of sorts built around it.
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