1. How I came to write my poems from poems

I just happened to hear a snatch of a Radio 4 programme where Gyles Brandreth was explaining how learning poems by heart was a good work-out for the brain. I thought, “Yes, I could do that,” and began by memorising a Shakespeare sonnet.

But then I thought that writing a sonnet instead would surely be more fun. I used Shakespeare’s Sonnet 106 When in the chronicles of wasted time… (the title seemed appropriate!) to prompt my own thoughts on love, time and the power of poetry: my final sestet goes:

“…Then do I muse on poetry’s strange force
To move us so in centuries far hence,
After the lovers’ lives had run their course,
The love itself long dead, once so intense.
For poetry escapes Time’s cruel scythe,
Though none of us who feel and write survive!”

I saw then how using the same form and responding to the general theme of an old poem could offer a catalyst for my own efforts. Once I had started, I found it hard to stop!

Next: Changing attitudes: nature