Home » Poets & Their Processes

Alasdair Paterson was a regular team member at Adrian Henri’s monthly readings . . .

I started writing in my mid-20s, having read little contemporary poetry. I was living in Liverpool, a place with a lot of accessible poetry going on, and soon I was … Continue reading »

Janet Sutherland: On Process

The poems included in LPM most recently (Issue Twenty Seven | Spring 2022 : from THE MESSENGER HOUSE – At Home 2020) are part of a much bigger project I … Continue reading »

Maitreyabandhu: On going on too long

I didn’t start writing poetry until I was in my late forties. I’d read poetry fairly deeply by then, I’d read my Coleridge, Keats and Shelley, but the idea of … Continue reading »

Liam Guilar: I want to tell you a story.

Shortly after I’d agreed to Linda and Claire’s invitation to write about my process, I realised how difficult it was going to be. When I read other poets’ accounts, I … Continue reading »

John Greening: Taking a Line for a Walk

That remark of Keats’ about seeing the long poem as ‘the Polar star’ of poetry is always twinkling somewhere in my mind, however dense the lyric and epigrammatic cloud-cover.  I … Continue reading »

Anne Ryland: Distance and Intimacy

The moment when I sense a sequence of poems emerging is not dissimilar to the first sighting of the haar, the sea fog, as it rolls in on the north-east … Continue reading »

Anna Reckin: The field and the turf: thinking about length and breadth

Working as I do with organic, open forms, length is always a consideration: an intrinsic part of how the poem works. For shorter poems ­ – and some of my … Continue reading »

Robert Minhinnick: About ‘Wild Swimming…’

About ‘Wild Swimming…’ “Nothing comes from nowhere” is a mantra that make increasing sense to me. My writing depends on memory, location, association. And writing, especially my poetry, sparks into … Continue reading »

Ian Seed: A Process of Abandonment

I have little self-confidence when it comes to writing long pieces, and usually will only do so under extreme pressure, for example having to submit my PhD thesis in 2012. … Continue reading »

Jane Duran: Slow Crossings

In 2010 Long Poem Magazine published my poem Panama Canal. The poem formed part of my sequence Graceline which Enitharmon brought out that same year. When I was 11 years … Continue reading »