When you set off to write a poem about windows because in the world of prison where you spent so many years windows are significant – chiefly for their lack of view and lack of resemblance to windows as we know them – and you end up with a poem about rain and memory, that’s what writing poetry seems to be: not really knowing where you will land.
As far as what a poem should be it’s hard to go past this from Andrew Mcmillan on judging the Magma poetry competition and what he’s looking for:
…poems should lock us out of the easy way in to saying something, poems should keep us outside the house of obvious meaning and cliche, poems should only let us in when they’re good and ready. Above all, poems should show us moments of unexpected, tender beauty, for our exhausted souls…
And there is still a poem about windows hanging – somewhere out there- waiting to be plucked from the air…
