Poetry quote - Jo Shapcott

I was inspired by this quote from Jo Shapcott, commenting on how ideas become poems:

‘A lot of things jostle in my notebook, things that I have overheard, or 

heard about. In all the jostling are ideas that can link, form 

a new kind of emotional truth, a different kind of truth than just 

simply the facts.'

Notebooks can be invaluable to writers. Image by DvortyGirl

Shapcott's poetry collection Of Mutability (review here) won the Costa Book of the Year, 2010. She is President of the Poetry Society, and teaches on the MA in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. 

Source of quote: The Telegraph Newspaper.

New on Minds and Models this week

This week on my psychology blog, I discuss procrastination, and why pressure can sometimes be a good thing and other times be very harmful.

New on Minds and Models this week.

This post should be of interest to anyone in education or working on creative pursuits such as writing or music.  Click here to read on.

Weekly challenge

Last week's challenge on my WriteWords poetry group was to write a poem on the theme of snakes, in honour of the Chinese New Year (of the Snake) beginning on Feb 10th.

'Clearly Harmless' by ViaMoi

This week, the challenge is:

Take a line from a poem - any poem and use that line as your title. Bonus points if the line you choose is interesting/unusual!

Additionally, can you hide a place name in your poem somewhere e.g. a phrase like 'The Spar is closed' contains 'Paris'. 

If you'd like to join in, you can join the site on a free trial.

See also: Write Words, 5 months in.