I’m delighted to welcome fellow Hedgehog Poetry Press, poet, Lesley Curwen, to Patricia’s Pen for the first time. Lesley shares a blog about inspiration for her poetry, including her latest release, Rescue Lines. Without further ado, it’s over to Lesley.
Inspiration
Lesley Curwen
I often wake up at 4am with a poem burning in my mind. I stab out the first ideas into the notes folder on my phone, go back to sleep and sometimes wake again with a new line or a different idea and blearily edit on the phone. Later that day, or sometimes that week, I transcribe the poem on to the laptop, editing it again as I go.
It seems like the ideas form from my subconscious as I sleep. They don’t come from dreams, as such. I imagine my mind as a cup foaming over with words.
These ideas will be subjects that I have thought of before, but they crystallise into poems in my sleep, usually with a first line, first stanza and a rough idea of where they will go, although often the ending changes radically within the revision process.
To order a copy of Sticky with Miles, send a DM to Lesley via Twitter (X) or go to Dreich HERE
Some of the proto-poems come from musings about consumerism and globalisation, about our multiplicity of choice, and the heartbreaking amount of waste we live with. I spent many years as a business correspondent for the BBC, travelling to many places to report on the global economy. I saw garment factories in China, gas pipelines in Siberia and palm-oil plantations in Ghana, and I have understood the bitter bargain humanity makes between prosperity and environmental damage. These days, I try to use my poetry brain to tell this story. Some of these poems appear in my eco-chapbook from Dreich, Sticky with Miles.
To order a signed copy of Rescue Lines DM Lesley on Twitter (X) or visit The Hedgehog Poetry Press.
Other proto-poems are born out of anger, on behalf of loved ones and others, who suffered as a result of forced adoption and coercive control. I have written about this in my Hedgehog Press pamphlet Rescue Lines, about the difficulties of escape and recovery. Sometimes I use extended metaphors to say the unsayable, and sometimes the raw truth emerges. I admire Pascale Petit perhaps more than any other poet, and I wish I could use animal metaphors as skilfully as she does. I am trying to learn how.
One thing that creeps, or oozes into most of my poems is – the sea. As a sailor and a year-round sea swimmer, I feel its presence everywhere, its comfort and its danger. Some poems have come to me when swimming. I once interviewed a sea-obsessed artist who drew ocean waves on waterproof paper while hanging IN the ocean! I haven’t tried writing in the wet stuff yet, but perhaps I should give it a go.
About Lesley Curwen
Lesley Curwen is a poet, broadcaster and sailor who lives in Plymouth. She writes about loss and rescue, and about our damaged marine environment.
She won the Molecules Unlimited Poetry Prize and was a finalist in the Wales Poetry Award. She has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. Her pamphlet ‘Rescue Lines’ is published by Hedgehog Poetry Press and her eco-chapbook ‘Sticky with Miles’ is published by Dreich. Nine Pens published ’Invisible Continents’, a collaborative pamphlet from Lesley, Jane R Rogers and Tahmina Maula.
Other poems have been published by Bad Lilies, East Ridge Review, Black Bough, Broken Sleep, Atrium, Spelt, The Alchemy Spoon and Ice Floe Press.
Links
Patricia M Osborne 