Poetry in Motion

I’ve just started work on a new series of books for young adults and I’ve got a funny feeling that these are the books I was always supposed to write. (Apologies to the books I’ve already written – you’re alright too.)

It’s tempting to rush straight in – get the words onto the page, see the voices of my new characters in black and white – but I know they’re not really ready to speak. Especially my teen boy characters – they are brooding and mysterious and only speak to me in monosyllables so far.

When I started researching it felt like I was wildly running around after all this external information; it gave me an uneasy feeling of pretense while I was trawling through books in libraries and surfing the net, as if I were a magpie stealing from other birds’ nests. But yesterday I realised that for everything I’ve retrieved externally there’s a reason I found it under my own skin, as if my subconscious knew what to look for. The dots are joining before my eyes.

I’m okay with that sounding as kooky as it does.

Poets I’m returning to as part of my research include Carol Ann Duffy, William Blake and The Kinks’ poet Ray Davies – the clip shows his song / poem in motion Return To Waterloo. Readers too young to remember The Kinks will almost certainly know the prequel song, Waterloo Sunset.