The secrets of [a few ] authors

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/mar/26/authors-secrets-writing

What makes a poem work and can a poem ever be willed into being?

Wendy Cope: You’ve got to have something to say, but you don’t always know what it is. It’s often just some words in your head that you think could be a line of a poem, so you write them down and see where it goes. One of the major misconceptions about poetry is that the poet has some kind of agenda and intentions, not just that some words come into their head and then they start playing with them and seeing where they go. Because sometimes I will try to write a poem and it just comes out dead because there isn’t really anything that’s deeply felt or worth saying. One thing that makes poems work is strong emotion, and I remember hearing James Berry, I think it was, saying that one characteristic of a good poet is that they feel things intensely, and he said: “Of course poets are not the only people who feel things intensely, but it is one of the qualities,” and I think that’s true


About Wendy Cope, see below

.https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/wendy-copehttps://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/wendy-cope