What got you interested in writing poetry?
As a child I used to enjoy the rhymed storylines in the Rupert Bear annuals; and my sister had a book called 'A Child's Garden of Verses', that had a poem about a train ride which sounded like the rhythms of a train journey clipping along if you read it at the right pace, which I really used to enjoy. But it wasn't until I was a teenager that I began to write properly, while I was at Sixth Form College in the UK (aged 16-18). My friends at the time all wrote poems too. It was a bit like the film "Dead Poets Society." Everyone was really interested and enthusiastic about poetry - both jokey poems and serious ones too. Much to my amazement, my poems became quite popular. People used to ask me to write poems for them, and so I began to think of poetry as something which I could actually do and share meaningfully with other people. I probably wouldn't have stuck with it if it hadn't been for that positive encouragement so early on from my peers. In that regard, I think I was really very fortunate.
What does your writing process look like?
I really enjoyed studying poetry at school. From time-to-time our English teachers used to get us to analyse "unseen" poems (which we'd not seen or studied before) in terms of structure, rhyme scheme, metre, and all that. Then we'd move on to discuss the theme of the poem and the poet's use of language. That kind of critical thinking: asking how did they do it; why did they do it in that manner, using those words, etc., was something which I actually found really inspiring. And so, naturally, I'd try to learn from this and imitate or adapt what I'd learned for myself. So a lot of my inspiration back then and even now still comes from reading other poets, but I always try to write about what I know and what I feel first-hand, because that's where the freshness and originality comes from. So I suppose my poems arise from within first and foremost, but with a good grounding in and awareness of what's already been tried and tested.
Do you have any favorite themes you tend to stick to?
In my haiku I tend to focus on the natural world, as well as my experiences of travel or everyday life. Haiku can be simple snapshots, or they can also have a weightier unseen metaphorical-metaphysical dimension to them. That marriage of the eidetic and the philosophical is quite a tricky thing to get right. Understatement is often the real key; it's the art of allusion. But it is a highly elusive element, something which relies more on what you feel than what you think. So it's often worth turning half your brain off when you try to write haiku. Focus on the words and they way they sound and then sometimes the inferences and hidden layers of meaning in a haiku just seem to emerge by themselves. When that happens and when this really works well it brings a truly magical feeling which I find is what makes writing haiku quite an addictive pursuit, mainly because it is something which always has to be worked for anew in each new poem.
Do you have a favorite poem or a favorite poet?
I have quite a broad range of favourites. I love everything from classic Anglo-Saxon poems, such as 'Beowulf' and the 'Battle of Maldon,' through Shakespeare, Marvell, and the Metaphysical Poets, to Clare, Keats, Byron and the Romantics; and onwards, to more modern poets, such as the Beats, Thom Gunn, and Seamus Heaney; while also spinning the globe round to include the T'ang Dynasty poets of China, and the old haijin of Japan, especially Matsuo Basho, as well. I particularly love the Saxon poets for their use of alliteration, and the later English poets for their use of language and word play. I mostly read the Asian poetry I've mentioned in translation, so primarily I tend to look to their use of imagery; although I am learning Japanese, and so I do try to get to know poets like Basho in the original Japanese as well, which is intriguing in a very different way.
Do you have any advice for new poets?
I'm very wary of giving advice to others because we are all different. There's an old adage which says that "poets are born, not made." I agree with this in regard to what I've already said about poetry coming from within, but as I also said before I think it's very important to think about 'how' we write what we write - because it's that sense of craft and the desire to hone one's skills which enables us to elevate our poems from something which is simply personal into something which is also simply universal - but with the emphasis on "simply" being the true key to that idea - if that makes sense?
Why do you love poetry?
A love of language and expression; of words and ideas; of sounds and images - that's what the best of poetry is all about for me. I love reading - absorbing words, thinking about them, tinkering with them - that's why for me reading and writing poetry always go hand-in-hand.
Where can readers find more of your work?
Many moons ago, my poems were first published in small press magazines when the internet was only just getting started [!] - so thankfully most of those early efforts are largely inaccessible now! - After a long hiatus, I have recently begun submitting to and publishing my work once again in various haiku and short verse publications on-line and in print, but the main place to find my poems is on my personal blog: Shinobazu Pond 俳句.