Finding new form

When you have the opportunity to discuss a poem with its creator, one of the most interesting questions to ask is how the poem came to be written. While there may be a touch of voyeurism in wanting to know the answer, it’s a healthy nosiness. You can both appreciate the poem more for knowing something of its genesis, and learn something beneficial to yourself by understanding another route a poem can take from head to page.

Poet Dorothy Nelson of Appley Bridge, Lancashire, used an earlier piece of writing to inspire . She had originally written it as a short story in 2001, and entered it for a competition run by the