The poem ‘Solo’ is an example of what I call ‘Fusion poems’, which blend linear experiments, prose poetry, haiku and tanka, and found material. They take the haibun (prose and haiku) as a model for other hybrid forms. I enjoy working with poetic constraint and with freer, experimental approaches, sometimes within the same work.

I’ve been writing lineated poetry since the early eighties, veering between traditional lyricism and more experimental writing, often with an attention to the possibilities of page space. I’ve been writing and publishing haiku and tanka for twenty-plus years. I’ve dabbled in prose poetry since the early days but became significantly more interested in it after joining the Prose Poetry Group, hosted by the International Poetry Studies Institute at the University of Canberra, in 2015. I’ve always had a penchant for found material, which can be so eye-opening and surprising, especially from eavesdropped speech.

As well as making use of specific forms, the constraint in the Fusion poem concerns maintaining a subtle connection between each fragment. Weirdly, perhaps synchronously, there seem to be intrinsic connections between the things I notice. Though craft and editing go into the work, Fusion poems highlight the process of selection of material.

In ‘Solo’, the found material emanates from conversations, emails, a strategy document, a contract, and various other kinds of reading matter, including spiritual texts, Twitter and an online newspaper. Some of the prose poetry borrows from the aesthetics of the essay. ‘Solo’ includes lines about meditation that are almost, but not quite, a haiku sequence. Meditation is a difficult topic to write about, since, in a sense, nothing happens. Except it does. Thoughts recur in seemingly unavoidable patterns, or randomly; strong emotions spring up – they sometimes make me jump out of my seat! The experience is inherently personal.

John’s original outline of what remake might achieve struck me as being quite manifesto-like, which fascinates me. Because manifestos tend to try to displace something from the past, they also tend to become new orthodoxies straight away. This makes me want to resist as much as go along with. John’s main objection was to the personal, and I agree that personal writing can ‘kill the poem dead’. Still, I don’t like to give up the option, because I find subjective experience intriguing, and because anything can work – it’s just that things over-used, and unconsciously, tend not to. ‘Solo’ is quite deliberately more personal than most of my other Fusion poems, as I want to test out whether or not that element ‘kills the poem dead’. It’s a personal poem that, hopefully, does other things, too – which readers will decide.