Verbal Adventures

My new book is going well but I need to push the boundaries more. My last one was too safe, particularly in its use of language. I keep thinking of something John Ahearn, the poet, said recently about the need to be adventurous in your writing. I haven't written any real poetry since I was eighteen or so but I've been looking back at some of my early efforts and I can see how experimental I was trying to be then. Some of the stuff I can't understand now, but at the time that was the whole point.

In those days I believed I would revolutionise writing. One of my early heroes was Gerard Manley Hopkins and his sprung rhythm. I don't know if he's read much these days or not. Most of my contemporaries raved about Dylan Thomas but I'm afraid to say I had my doubts. Still, he could use language in wonderful ways and you can't argue with that.

Back then of course I was a hopeless romantic. My favourite quotation was, not surprisingly, from Oscar Wilde. "People say that love is an illusion. They're wrong. Life is an illusion."

I dunno, Oscar. Maybe life and love both.

Whatever, my new book is going to take chances, to push those boundaries until they burst.