Writing Poems

I’ve always written poems. I can go back through my archives and find poems from way back, on political events, family celebrations, ballads to celebrate sporting triumphs. But only in retirement has that become the main thing that I do, with a regular output of at least a hundred poems a year. Two a week, every week. It’s ridiculous. Look back through the collected poems of Philip Larkin, and for some years you’ll find only one poem for that year. maybe there’s such a thing as too prolific?

But it’s such a pleasure. the other stuff, reading it to people, entering for competitions, having it published and trying to sell copies, is a different form of activity. But the pleasure of having an idea, working on it, seeing a formal product emerge on what started as blank paper is a constant delight, and when for any reason I don’t spend time doing that, I always find that I miss it.

Not on holiday. Now, when I know I’m going away, I take plenty of paper. I store up ideas, background cuttings, weird little notes which would make no sense to anyone else, because I know there’ll be times when the people I’m with will being going for walks, when I’ll be sitting in a pub, on a bench, or at home, happily scribbling away. So during our week at Saltburn I wrote poems about the Boris Johnson and his ethics adviser, the Rooney girls (that’s Sally and Coleen), and an American odd couple, both called White - a female warder and a male lifer, who had an illicit affair and ran off together. That’s what I call a holiday.