Simon Armitage offers top tips for National Poetry Day

To mark National Poetry Day 2010 Faber teamed up with Culture24 to film four poets who each reveal what inspires them and how they write their poems.
Writing poetry can seem like a daunting challenge to a fledgling poet: where do you find inspiration? How do you start a poem? And how can you use poetry to express your emotions and explore language?
Simon's top three tips are: read, read, read.

[@dlgm161]

Excellent. Sometimes, it's the challenge of writing about the previously undefined that helps me get it over the line. Like a painter approaching a blank canvas. And when it's done, you look at it, and think, that's it, that's what it was. Write quickly.

[@gavinreid2741]

My English teacher told me to " Read, Reid" or was it "Reid, read".

[@robertgainer2783]

What you said about the process of poetry resonated with me. Thank you.

[@sherlockholmeslives.1605]

Me too Robert.

[@انت-صلي-عالنبي-بس]

What a Wonderful writer

[@alansbinnie1446]

Not from I have read.

[@mooch9668]

i have that chair

[@perpleblasjr9278]

lol

[@merkywaters45]

and sometimes the words come to you and that's when beauty is found

[@sherlockholmeslives.1605]

Keith Douglas ( 1920 - 1944 ) wrote about a ball being caught in a man's hand too, in his famous poem 'How To Kill' ( 1943 ). I don't know if Simon was inspired by that in his poem here.

[@drewroberts139]

Bonus tip: Read! 😎

[@jarrodlacy9856]

Well done.

[@abluestripedshirt]

this video deserves more views

[@alansbinnie1446]

No it doesn't.

[@nononouh]

3:40

[@Simpaulme]

👍

[@Leah287]

he sounds bored

[@domgene3494]

Simon Armitage says you can’t write poetry without being a reader so forget it if you don’t read? For me, I don’t and have hardly ever read. But I write pretty good poetry!? Shaun Harris (look out for me)

[@callumsutherland2954]

I'm sorry, but if you admit to not reading, I simply doubt you write good poetry. That's not really as harsh as it seems, by the way -- almost nobody writes good poetry, because poetry is _phenomenally_ difficult to write well. I mean, even logistically speaking, it's phenomenally unlikely to write good poetry without reading: poetry is text created by charging language with meaning, through all available means; that is, using every possible aspect of language to ensure that each word in a poetic text bears the maximum possible weight. Without prodigous reading, acquiring the intense and comprehensive knowledge of the multitude of ways words can mean necessary to actually _do_ that charging is nigh on impossible. Professing not to read much, or not to appreciate other poets, is a common enough affectation amongst successful poems (think of Ted Hughes, for instance). But this universally turns out to be just that: an affectation, a carefully curated attempt to seem rootsier, more primal. The poets who genuinely _don't_ read? There's a reason one never hears of them.

[@Bradford.C.Wallsbury]

Malcolm Guite said it very well when he said when the poet writes he has every poet he's ever read's music ringing in his ears, and almost all poets start by aping their favourites, or even doing it intentionally to multiple poets as an exercise - many famous poets have poems titled 'A [blank] in the style of [blank]' or along those lines, and most modern poets when their collected works come around, their juvenalia will have very clear tones of older poets. Modern poetry is fine in itself, but the worst advice you can get is to not bother with poetical form or the canonical poets (especially from the mouth of teachers and other obnoxious academics with political agendas). The advice to not read is even worse. You need boundaries to break them, and modern poetry seems for the most part seems to ignore the boundaries completely, which i think is a major problem, but that's for another day

[@Bradford.C.Wallsbury]

@@callumsutherland2954 When did Ted Hughes claim to not read? I'm not too sure what you mean - he has many essays on other poets and his own selected poems of other poets, and that's not even mentioning his huge tome on Shakespeare