Other Lives

I first came across the work of Bernard Welt through his poem 'I stopped writing poetry' in the Best American Poetry series. I've just ordered his 1979 collection 'Serenade' and noticed he has also co-authored an interesting short book on American mass culture called 'Mythomania'. His work isn't very well-known in the U.K. and I hope this goes some way to addressing that.

At the moment I'm in the unusual position of having three poems on the go at the same time. 'Waking in Siena on Easter Sunday' is a title that's been in search of a poem for some time. I wanted to write something that collected some of my memories of the times I've visited Siena, but wasn't sure how to go about it until I read Kenneth Koch's poem 'To World War Two' in which he addresses the event in person. I have used this device and begun what reads like a long letter to the city. One of the things I like about writing a longer poem is putting it aside when I'm not sure how to continue and waiting for a solution to suggest itself. I find this often takes the poem in a direction I hadn't anticipated or necessarily desired at the outset. This element of surprise in the writing of a poem is something that readers generally aren't aware of. Many people believe poets are completely in control of their material and that a single word couldn...