About the poem 'Drinking and Writing' was written late at night with a bottle of red wine sitting nearby. It's actually a cautionary poem - don't drink and write. Doing so could seriously harm the greatest of poems! About the author I'm in my mid-twenties. I was born in South Yorkshire but moved to North Yorkshire when I started studying in Scarborough in 2000. I now live in the splendid city of York, where I work as a Library Assistant. I've been publishing poems here and there since my teens. I'm also a songwriter and perform regularly on the Yorkshire folk scene. The creative process | "If we all scribbled down a poem whilst on the bus, the world would be a better place." | |
I learned from poets such as Frank O'Hara and Charles Bukowski that poetry can be a spontaneous and casual art form. Of course, it can't always be dashed off, but I like the idea that you can jar a moment, capture it like a photograph. Overworking poetry can have terrible results. If we all scribbled down a poem whilst on the bus, the world would be a better place. I also tend to include humour, often a surreal humour, in my poems. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But I try not to let it overshadow the meaning and the imagery. The most important aspect of a poem is its ability to convey the image. Nothing should get in the way of that. | 
