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John Greening

John Greening

John Greening is a poet, critic and editor who has spent much of his life teaching adults and young people — in Scotland, the USA, and Cambridgeshire. Two years as...
John Greening

How I Write

The blank page can be unnerving to a novelist preparing for the day’s long trek, but it’s a wasteland that poets have comfortably colonised.
John Greening

My Reading Habits

Those heaps of books in the living room left as if to mark my territory, with their scruffy bookmarks, torn up poetry drafts may, of course, be evidence of a project.
John Greening

Letter To My Readers

Think of yourself as a baby dropped in a swimming pool. You won’t drown, and… may even find you’re enjoying the experience.
John Greening

Writer's Block

Perhaps your subject went away; the war ended; you moved from your special place; the poet of youth grew old.
John Greening

Writers Who Inspire Me

There are poets I love but will hesitate to read if I am in the middle of writing a poem because I know their style is infectious.
John Greening

The Best Advice I Ever Received

Ted Hughes went on to stress how important it was to keep my creative energies at top pressure by living a bit uncomfortably, with a final dependence on writing.
John Greening

How Writing Changes The Writer

Writing poetry is about tuning in; language is the necessary crystal. Find the wavelength and everything connects with everything.
John Greening

The Perfect Place To Write

Cambridgeshire, or what I still think of as ‘Huntingdonshire’, has become the perfect place for me to write in.
John Greening

Life-changing Literature

Although the 8mm silent version of Milton’s epic never made it to a sheet of painted hardboard near you, I think I was onto something.
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