26 things you only know if you’re a poet

Tim Relf details the inner workings of poets

1. When someone asks “What sort of poetry do you write?”, you want to hide behind the sofa.
2. When they add “Does it rhyme?”, you actually do hide behind the sofa.
3. You know, with every fibre of your being, that you shouldn’t use the word ‘shard’. But sometimes something about it just feels so very right …
4. The term ‘fibonacci’ is vaguely familiar, but you’re more likely to be able to explain the inner workings of the UN than recall what it means
5. There is a law stipulating that reviews must contain the word ‘urgent’.
6. There should be a law stipulating more poetry is published in the national media.
7. In the event of a fire, you’d save that battered collection by your favourite author above almost anything else.
8. Some lines, you delete then put back in. Then delete then put back in. This process can continue for months.
9. That first draft you’ve just bashed out in 15 minutes feels like the best thing you’ve ever written. So why, 90 seconds later, has it become absolute tripe?
10. When you use the word ‘you’ in a poem, you usually mean ‘I’. Unless you actually do mean ‘you’. But you probably don’t.
11. When you hear the term ‘concrete’, it’s not the building material that comes to mind.
12. Messages in Submittable that begin “Thank you for your submission …” rarely end well.
13. When someone describes a poem as “powerful” it usually means they haven’t got the faintest idea what it’s about. Or that they think it’s rubbish. Or both.
14. When you say of that lauded contemporary poet “my fault, I know, but I just can’t quite connect with their work” what you actually mean is “their writing is overrated”.
15. That time you claimed you were switching the camera off at a Zoom reading because the internet signal was flaky, you actually left the room. For 25 minutes. To watch Happy Valley.
16. Poetry festivals are the new rock-and-roll. Unlike music festivals, however, you don’t come back from them dehydrated and covered in mud.  
17. The principles of time operate differently in a poetry workshop. The silence between you finishing reading one of your poems and someone commenting on it – which actually lasts two seconds – becomes seven years of apprehension.
18. You have 27 versions of one poem and can’t bring yourself to delete a single one of them for fear it might be the one.
19. When you think a poem is the one, it usually isn’t.
20. ‘Caesura’ is not a medical term.
21. You once talked to a stranger at a party about English and Petrarchan sonnets when you were drunk. They left shortly afterwards.
22. You’ve had spells of not writing poetry, but always come back to it. Always. It’s like reaching out for the bannister as you come down the stairs in the dark.
23. Similes such as “like reaching out for a bannister as you come down the stairs in the dark” usually sound rubbish when you re-read them.
24. There are few feelings as good as writing a last line that works.
25. There are few feelings as bad as not being able to write a last line that works.
26. No last line ever completely works.

Tim Relf’s poems have appeared in such titles as The Spectator, Acumen and The Rialto. He is currently poet-in-residence at Leicester Botanic Garden. He was a runner-up in the Prole Laureate competition 2022, has been awarded a place on Writing East Midlands’ 2022/23 mentoring scheme and is an alumnus of Faber’s Advanced Poetry Academy. His most recent novel, published by Penguin, has been translated into more than 20 languages. He also contributes to Poetry News, Poetry Wales and BookBrunch.

Photo by Leonardo Baldissara on Unsplash