1. For me a poem starts when a thought-line I wasn't aware of before pops into my head. Like this one that suddenly appeared as I was walking out of my bathroom this morning: What colour of rose... This is the most exciting moment, because a thought-line doesn't come from nowhere. It comes via a process so true and so of yours that no outsiders, even yourself, have any real control over. Now whatever you consciously believe in or stand on, your poetic process is the one you've got to trust.
What dream of man
What part of heart
What colour of rose are you
2. I wrote my first poem in English. I loved writing in English from the beginning because I felt much freer than writing in my mother tongue, freed from the thoughts of school, parents, friends. I must have felt like no one could hear the thoughts behind what I put down on paper and showed to them. I had something to say, while opening up just a little. Perhaps more importantly, there was a place where my feelings were saved without my thinking them through. There must have been an even more secret place where my feelings entered without me knowing, where my thoughts became while I was looking elsewhere. They would appear when I wrote a poem - in a foreign language, which I didn’t speak, and no one around me spoke - and I got to know them.
Photo: white chalk stone on the beach of Botany Bay, Kent, England
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