Authors Electric

When I’m wearing my tutor hat, I blithely tell poets that they’ll gain a lot by writing short stories and learning about narrative and structure. I tell short story writers that their dialogue will benefit enormously from writing a script. And I tell scriptwriters that having a crack at poetry will hone their language skills. I also tell students that the form should fit the idea – some ideas are too long and complicated for anything except a novel, others too short for anything other than flash fiction. Some are too visual for anything other than a stage play, others too sound-based for anything but a radio play. But it wasn’t until I read Manifold Manor , by Philip Gross, that the point of poetry sank in. At the end he says, “Really, the difference between poetry and prose isn’t to do with lines and rhymes. Ordinary prose can tell you what has happened, but poetry can make it happen to you now .”             For decades I was ...

I think it was Alec Guinness who said that when he wanted a new approach to a character he was playing he often went for a walk around the zoo, until he came across an animal that he felt fitted the bill. I've written poems about birds as birds such as the questzal, in  The Spirit Collection , but taking an animal as a template for a human character is a good idea for writers as well as actors. I’ve found most of my inspiration has come from birds. I’m not a proper twitcher, but I do love watching them, particularly in my garden. This year we’ve had great tits nesting, and watching the devoted behaviour of the parents, from the initial viewing of the nestbox to the fledging of the babies, has been an education. They didn’t rush their purchase. After the first visit we didn’t see them for another three weeks, during which time I imagine they were out and about, viewing other properties. Once they’d settled on our box they did a very thorough survey. This took at least fiftee...