I remember when I was about seven or nine or between those years, the extraordinary sense of satisfaction – and perhaps I should say smugness, I don’t know – that came to me when I discovered that I could write poetry. In fact, at that time I kept a book, a little notebook which I had until fairly recently, and the title of it, it still seems to me a good title for any book of poems, was The Pieces of Poetry I Have Made Up. And I copied them all into this notebook, even then I had a sort of tremendous sense of satisfaction and pleasure, I don’t know, which comes to one when you suddenly discover that there’s something that you can do.
I think, almost always when I’m writing poetry, I have written the whole poem, so to speak, at one sitting. Sometimes they’ve taken me quite a long time to write, and I’ve written many, many drafts of one poem. But I prefer to finish them at the time, without having to go back to them days later, or alter them weeks later. I prefer on the whole, if I can, to be able to say, ‘That’s finished’, a few hours after I’ve begun it. Some, of course, take longer than others. And as for how I start, I think quite often I’ve deliberately – particularly when I’ve been rather depressed and felt that I wasn’t achieving much – I have deliberately sat down in order to write something, and most often, I think, something comes of it. But at other times I’ve followed out an idea, perhaps, or sometimes the starting point has been a line which might even disappear altogether in the final version. And sometimes I’ve just sat down and read a lot of other poetry and one’s mind becomes, perhaps, more receptive and ready for the idea which ultimately is going to start one off.
