JENNA PLEWES

Jenna Plewes: Why I write poetry

My father was always quoting poems and fragments of poems. I started with his four volumes of the Georgian Poets, his Walt Whitman, Other Men’s Flowers. I read more widely, found poetry that moved me, made me see the world afresh, that glowed on the page -  Gerard Manley Hopkins, Dylan Thomas, Mary Oliver, Yeats, Seamus Heaney, Robert Frost.

I’d always written poems for special occasions, and Christmas letters. When I retired a friend persuaded me to join a creative writing group and take writing seriously. The course was for prose and I wrote short stories and a novella.  However, I found that I preferred the discipline and economy of poetry, the hunt for the right word for right place, the cutting away to find the essence of the poem – like a sculpture chiselled out of a block of marble.  I’m a potter, when a poem begins to take shape it’s like feeling the clay becoming centred on the wheel; there’s the same excitement.

I enjoy poetry courses and workshops and belonging to poetry groups. I’ve learnt by reading a wide range of contemporary poetry, sharing poetry with generous poetry buddies who give honest criticism and encouragement, by just doing it.

 Over the last 10 years I’ve had 7 collections published. I love shaping a collection, working with an editor, holding the finished book in my hands.
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I get itchy if I haven’t written anything for a few days. Worries and problems around me fade away; it’s an escape into another world. I can find an hour has gone by and I’ve a page of crossings out and one line worth keeping. I’ve a pictorial imagination and began by writing about the natural world, unspoiled, wild places I’ve visited. This led on to writing about my childhood, and family relationships, about being a wife and a mother. I was a counsellor and psychotherapist working in General Practice for many years and this has always coloured my writing; the stepping into someone’s shoes, being with them as they find their way forward, sharing their journey for a short while. In my latest book I’ve wanted to celebrate courage, resilience and kindness, the unexpected, unspectacular joys that are there if we stop and pay attention.

Why do I write? it’s time consuming, frustrating, addictive, my poems are never good enough but it’s fulfilling, makes me happy.

Jenna Plewes' collection The Salt & Sweet of Memory was published by Dempsey & Windle in 2020