KATE MIDDLETON
Joan Didion once said of her novels that her first sentence has to be perfect, because everything grows from that, and once you’ve got your first paragraph written, there’s no going back.
JORDIE ALBISTON
I agree with her! And of course it’s more compressed with poetry — you’d be talking about your first word as important, your first phrase, and after your first sentence there being no going back… And it’s a question of respect as well, of honouring the poem. What is trying to come out on the page? You think in your head “I want to write a poem in Italian quatrains” or whatever, and you’ve a vague idea it’ll be about a page and a half long, and you want to cover this sort of ground, and that’s about all you start with — and then this completely different animal comes out of the computer, which has barely anything to do with your original idea, and you think “Where did that come from?”… It comes down to respecting and honouring the poem itself. It’s the Michelangelo thing: chipping, tapping away, seeing what’s inside there, trying to help get it out.
(from ‘An interview with Jordie Albiston‘, ‘Famous Reporter #24’, 1st Dec 2001)