THE SWERVE

The point of this is to emerge with a poem about change which also embodies change.

1. Start out in sections or fragments and see how it goes.

2. Maybe look at other sequence /fragment poems like Wallace Stevens’ ‘Thirteen ways of looking at a Blackbird’ Warsan Shire’s ‘The House’ Robert Hass’s ‘Lines on Last Spring’

or (a really important poem of his, on his relations with his alcoholic mum as a child but also on love sex and evolution) Dragonflies Mating.

These unfold in numbered sections, watch how they tell a story or stories, how the perspective might shift from one section to the next, how voice or speaker, length, shape or tone of each section vary.

3. Once you have a sequence of fragments, lay around with losing some, melding them together into one, reversing them... Maybe they done want to go into one - which is fine. ABOUT THE POET

Ruth Padel is a writer of unusual range. She has close personal links to Greece, India, classical music, nature, wildlife conservation and science, but is first and foremost an award-winning poet. Her books include thirteen acclaimed poetry collections, two novels, and a wide sweep of non-fiction. She lives in London, is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and Zoological Society of London, and currently Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Magdalene College Cambridge.