How did you first engage with poetry?
My mother was a professional storyteller in libraries and schools, so I grew up within earshot of a fairly ageless poetry. There were lots of other familial inputs as well, from my aunt in particular, but my first personal engagement was with a little anthology of William Blake. The Songs were familiar but the heretical, metaphysical stuff appealed to my sense of religious seriousness and perversity at once. I remember carrying that book around as if I could grasp it by gradual absorption—so my first self-directed engagement with poetry was more or less talismanic. I eventually learned how to read poetry by staring at it for many years without a clue. Probably the lyric sheets of favourite records were another point of entry—there seemed to be such a wide gulf between the weight of the words transcribed and their life in song, sometimes I would just stare at the lyrics and try to guess the delivery.
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