Most of my life I have written poems—in excess of 5,000. Only recently have a number been published. In a sense, the poems are an autobiography of my language. (1)

The commodity of poetry is words, how they are or are not put together. Sometimes this is forgotten. A case could be made that over the last century or so, the major poetic movement has been from what words say to what words do. (2)

A poem cannot afford to be lost for words. The poem should keep an open ear, like a listening-shell, for words. In this way a poem is a process in which words find out something about themselves on the way through. The challenge for every poem is the silence at its centre, needing to be filled with words, some of which may prefer not to be there. (3)

I see writing a poem akin to organising a dinner party. First, the guest may be found anywhere: a snatch of conversation, something in a magazine somewhere, or online as Mark Young demonstrates. Next, the host/ess ensures that the seating puts complementary guests together or in proximity. If you want to change the tone of the party (or poem), change the seating arrangements. Which particular verb sits beside which particular noun, or should the noun be across the table? In a sense, the poet is a movie director. Scenes are cut or rearranged. A famous example of this is Pound’s reshaping of Eliot’s ‘Wasteland’. (4)

In my case, I have scores of notebooks containing interesting words, line and phrases. Sometimes, these find themselves used in a poem written years later. (5)

Turning to ‘Velleity’, it eludes me where exactly the word came from. The Concise Oxford is a help: ‘n. low degree of volition not prompting to action’. The sense is of ennui, languidness, never quite getting around to something you want to do. (6)

The poem looks in on this ‘she’. By the end, she is looking out. (7)

The poem’s architecture sets up this binary condition. Hence, the regular three-line stanzas in three sections. Formally, something wants to be done, but language stands in the way, in creating a dreamy haze: ‘drift away, sun-alcove, ‘her smile park-like’. (8)

‘Soma’ I seem to remember reading in a poem by Alan Loney. Taking my interest, it was written in a notebook—and here it reappears. Maybe I came across the word elsewhere? (9)

I am unsure where the gender-fluid angels come from? (I hope the telephone number does not actually belong to someone.) Re-reading the poem, I am unsure where these guests come from or even if they were invited? (10)

The sense of ‘audience’ derives from a Geraets poem. The phraseology has been altered. An origin remains. (11)

The second set of three stanzas trace a shift from the ‘outside’ to focus more on the woman herself. She is not oblivious to the outside, and in the end is perhaps not unhappy with ‘dawn’s condolences'. (12)

The poem employs several long-vowel sounds to convey this ennui. ‘Dawn's condolences’ is mentioned, others are ‘to her own light’, plus the hyphenated ‘slow-motion, laid-back’ and ‘her half-wait’. (13)

What I hope to achieve is a poem that chases the purity of the language, a desire as attractive as it is impossible. One remains unsure to what extent the reader shares this aspiration. (14)