https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/sep/21/poetry.writing.wendycope

Extract:

t seems odd to me that anyone who hates reading poetry should want to write it at all. Are there amateur painters who never go to an art gallery? Or amateur musicians who never listen to music? Sometimes non-reading poets explain that they are afraid of being influenced. They don’t understand that being influenced is part of the learning process. Some of my earliest (and unpublished) poems read like poor imitations of Sylvia Plath. Others read like poor imitations of TS Eliot. I was unaware of this at the time. Gradually I worked my way through these and many other influences towards finding my own voice. Nowadays I hope I sound like myself in my poems but I am still influenced by what I read, still learning.

Well, I have to keep quite busy as I do not like to think
I have 59 new credit cards  and I   wash them in the sink
I take each one quite carefully, rotating them in use
Or they may be jealous and accuse me of abuse.

Then I have to pay them off or  they incur interest
Not like handsome men might do when they don’t wear a vest.
Interest is money which the banks demand  be paid
If we spend just pence more than the limit that they gave.

I do it on the telephone so I can have a chat
Sunday is the best, I find, if you decide on that
Enter all the numbers that  run straight across the card
A pity there’s no hurdle and that gambling has been barred.

Also, you must tell them then, just what you want to pay
Make your mind up when you start or you’ll be there till May
And 59 in total is more than there are months  per day
My head is reeling from the bills, my canary has gone grey!

It seemed the fire of Grenfell Tower had spread
A hear oppressive like the fires of hell
London smothered in air dull and dead.

Flames that slobbered with a passion red
Water that  the sun burned up too well
It seemed the fire of Grenfell Tower had spread

God permitted Satan with his dread
Britain quarrelled, split , prepared to kill.
London smothered in air dull and dead.

A referendum showed us all ill-bred.
Neighbours spoke in words that I call vile.
It seemed the fire of Grenfell Tower had spread

By what person is our nation led
who fills our stomach with acidic bile?
The PM spoke in words both dull and dead.

Tempers raged  like fires all fresh and wild
Evil was to emptiness beguiled
It seemed the fire of Grenfell Tower had spread
People smothered in the fire lie dead.

Picked like a red flower,  smitten by  red earth
Invisible  at sunset, shaded at soft dawn
Hear a word made flesh, see a being but no birth.

What were blue and red saying, was it a curse?
As the graduates crossed, in red gowns , the green lawn
She picked  a red flower,   tore the  red earth

In the immeasurable ellipse, drawn into the next verse.
The sign of the cross broken, the illuminations torn
Hear a word made to be spoken, see a being of no birth.
Were the strangers forsaken, were their minds cursed?
See the decorations of fire, see the scars new born
Lit by  red flares, buried  with new  baptised earth

Oh,sweet-bitter eros  dying,  hanging gardens of death
Shall Babylon be summoned by the ancient ram’s horn?
Hear a word made dross, see a being but no worth.

Where is my silver needle, my  thread long and forlorn?
Where can we acknowledge the dead, the never to be born?
Picked out like a red flower,  shot down in  red earth
Hear his  flesh die wordless ; give a Bible a  slow birth